Central Abbotsford

Every year, on the first weekend of October, one of our fine local farm markets holds its annual apple sale, where they sell 30lb boxes of Ambrosias for a price much lower than usual. And each year for the last decade or so, I have attended and purchased 3-4 of these boxes for a very specific purpose.

Now, if you are a regular reader of this newsletter, you will have heard about my enjoyment of apples already, and you might think that a hundred pounds of apples is simply my weekly dietary allotment. And, while you’re not far off, this October purchase is made for the express purpose of making multiple pots of applesauce. Each box ends up yielding about 12-14 litres of it, neatly spiced with cinnamon and frozen in yogurt containers accumulated throughout the year.

“Why so much applesauce?”, you may ask. There’s no simple answer, but the complicated one is that I like eating it. So I make a lot of it to eat throughout the year. But that’s enough about my weirdness. I’m here to draw a theological point out of the making of the applesauce. 

The first step (not counting buying the apples) is peeling and coring them. Back near the start of my applesauce endeavours, I purchased a peeler/corer to serve this purpose. It is hand-cranked and generally works very well. 

However, it only works well if the apple is secured and centred on the prongs of the device, allowing the base of the core to line up with the coring part of the apparatus. If it is off-centre, or not securely anchored, the apple will wobble as it is being peeled, which results in one (or both) of two results: the core doesn’t get fully removed and you end up with seeds in your applesauce, or the peeler can’t push the apple through the corer and you end up spinning the apple in place, peeling away its flesh instead of the peel, wasting what should be the prime sauce ingredient. Neither is a good result. The apple needs to be anchored well.

The circumstances of life have a way of sometimes destabilizing us. We can feel as though we, or the world around us, are spinning out of control; that the best parts of us are being taken, even wasted, for purposes that we don’t understand. What are we to do?

Just like the apple, we are called to be anchored. The Scriptures abound in reminders that our hope for certainty, for assurance, for security, lie not in this world, but in the hope set before us by the promises of God secured in Christ. Hebrews 6:19 refers to Christ’s accomplishment as a “sure and steadfast anchor for the soul.” Like a ship on the waters, or a misaligned apple on the peeler, we may be seemingly tossed in all directions, with little control over what happens next. But, we can be sure that this uncertainty, disorienting as it is, is temporary. 

Are you in a place where your life circumstances are causing you to doubt God’s goodness? Does your day-to-day life seem like it is devoid of purpose? Have you gone through a period where you feel spiritually dry, or adrift, and you are wondering what you must do to “make things right”? If so, the call is not to look within, but to fix your eyes on the anchor of your soul.

Jesus has accomplished what you cannot. Jesus has secured the eternity that outweighs your present trials. Jesus is the hope: for nations, for individuals, for sinners lost at sea. As we come together once more as a church family this weekend, let us remind ourselves and one another that we do so with the holy purpose of proclaiming Him to one another, until He returns again.