Not room enough

We have an apple tree in our backyard. It seems to be an every Other year apple tree. Last year we got two or so apples. We carefully cut them up and shared them. That was it. We had been blessed, by being able to pick and eat apples from our own tree.
This year we had a multitude of apples. We spent quite a bit of time picking, washing, cutting, cooking, canning, peeling, coring, juicing and even eating our apples. With the exception of a few apples too high up to pick and too stubborn to fall, and with the help of my sister-in-law Stephanie, we finished them. Now we have apple sauce, apple butter, apple syrup, and apple pie filling in jars.

Two years ago we had an amazingly HUGE bumper crop. A friend said it was because the year before it had froze and so the trees didn't make any. Regardless of the reason there were too many apples to pick, too many to can. They were a blessing, but I was nine months pregnant and there were too many. I would pick a bunch of apples only to look again and see that I had hardly made a dent.

It was then that I finally understood a phrase from the scriptures. He says and I will pour you out blessings that there will not be room enough to receive them. Blessings take work. Children, family, marriage, all of our greatest blessings take work to maintain to take care of to preserve. That work is a blessing in and of itself. It is the evidence of how blessed we are. The apples were a blessing. I had done nothing to make the tree grow apples. I hadn't planted it, hadn't fertilized it, hadn't sprayed it, nothing. I was reaping the reward of someone else's foresight and labor. The blessings were there for the taking. I just had to reach out my hand and take them. Then I had the choice of preserving that blessing and making it last- of expanding it. I can't help but feel that the Lord is often disappointed in me when He gives me a blessing and I take the free for the asking, but don't put in the hard work and effort necessary to preserve that blessing for myself and for others.

I am happy to have jars in my basement. Glad to have learned how. Blessed to have been protected from harm. I hope that I will always try to make room for the blessings that the Lord wants to give me.