Where the Pecans Live

By whom are you troubled? Someone who is hateful, or deceitful, or who is a thief? If it is January, there are no pecans visible on the limbs of a pecan tree. Not even a leaf.

The pecans are there, though – already in the tree. If it continues to be January, the nuts will remain in the tree, and never appear on the tree. The warmth and rain of the spring bring the leaves, then the blossoms, and the bees and wind pollenate them to cause them to bring the nuts. They still have to mature and fall for us to get them and use them in our pies and cakes.

Those who are troubling you need the power of the love Jesus proved with blood. Our patience in administering the warmth and rain and touch that pollenates, followed by the patience waiting for maturity, may change some of them into His likeness. That’s how we have made it this far, too – someone prayed and loved and waited.

For this reason also, since the day we heard this, we haven’t stopped praying for you. We are asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding, so that you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to Him, bearing fruit in every good work and growing in the knowledge of God. May you be strengthened with all power, according to His glorious might, for all endurance and patience, with joy giving thanks to the Father, who has enabled you to share in the saints’ inheritance in the light. He has rescued us from the domain of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of the Son He loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
(Colossians 1:9-14 Holman Christian Standard Bible ©®)