WINEBERRIES

Rubus phoenicolasius.  Wineberries.  These sweet babies grow wild, mainly in the Appalachian Region, ripening for the pick around mid-July, depending on the elements.  This has been a good rain year and the wineberries are a popping.  Wineberries are sometimes mistaken for wild raspberries and are actually in the rose family.  They can be used just like other wild berries for eating, freezing, and jamming.

Wineberries are not native to the United States they arrived from the west as an ornamental plant.  And like most things that are not native, they tend to go wild and sometimes become invasive, like stink bugs!  Just like those pesky stink bugs, the wineberry bushes pop up from nowhere and take over.  We’ve got quite a berry patch.  The bushes grow very densely, right on top of each other, sometimes making it hard to harvest the fruit because of their prickly branches.  Sometimes the fruit is right out in the open, and sometimes you have to move thorny branches to get to the berries, but it’s definitely worth the scratches to harvest those sweet berries.  If you’ve ever picked berries, you know it can be ouchy.

Tony and I were out berry-picking on the east side Saturday morning.  As we’re yumming and ouching,  we hear the peep, peep, peep of my chick-chicks.  Turning around there are two of my gals heading our way.  As they’re making their way to us, they’re eating the low lying berries.  They kind of work like we do – eat and walk, eat and walk.  Once the low lying were cleared out, we offered them some of our pickings which they obligingly gobbled up.

A couple of pints in and we’ve worked our way to the west side.  Once again we hear the peep, peep, peep of my chick-chicks.  We’ve become the Wineberry Pipers.  We toss them a berry here and there and then each step we take, they are on our heels.  We offer them the sweet fruit and they follow us.  They want more and more and they would follow us down any path to get the fruit.

You make known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand.  Psalm 16:11

My chicks made me think, are we willing to follow Jesus down any path for the sweet rewards that come with following Him?  The sweet joy of His presence?  The sweet joy of eternal life with Him?  Kind of like our berry patch, the world is invasive.  It is quite subtle, a plant pops up here then a runner underground pops up another little berry patch, then that one pops up another little berry patch, and it just goes on and on, all happening underground, until the prickly vines sometimes obscure the sweet rewards.

Show me the right path, O LORD; point out the road for me to follow.  Lead me by your truth and teach me, for you are the God who saves me. All day long I put my hope in you. Psalm 25:4-5

But, we know the path, don’t we?  The path to the joys of Jesus.  Sure enough, those briars and thistles in the world will threaten to take over and will need to be held back or cut off to get to the fruit.  Those thorny branches in life will need to be anticipated and avoided. But, if we are following close behind Him, He will help us with the brambles and the thistles and the thorns, and we won’t have to navigate those prickly parts by ourselves to get to the sweet reward.