If you come to my office, you’ll see a bunch of things hanging on the wall above my computer. One of my favorite things is my calendar which includes quotes from Sister Joan Chittister, a Benedictine nun from Erie, PA and prolific author. I have enjoyed her books over the years and so having a calendar with her quotes helps to keep me in that mindset.
Each day of August I came into my office and saw this quote, “What a gift it is to sit and let the juice of a peach run down your chin.”
Most of the time, the quote is about being contemplative in our relationship with God and reflecting on some aspect of God’s love, mercy, justice, and peace.
But this quote absolutely stumped me. Why would the great Sister Joan write about eating a peach? I don’t like peaches much myself but can understand someone finding joy in them. But why does this quote end up in a calendar of some her most powerful words?
It took me until the end of August to get it. This quote about sitting and enjoying a peach is about enjoying the simple things in life.
Often we make our relationship with God way too complicated. We worry that the words of prayers aren’t enough. We don’t think we’re very good if we don’t have a full grasp of each word of the Bible. We berate ourselves for not being holy enough or good enough or some other similar frame of mind.
So sometimes it takes the simplicity of eating a piece of fruit to realize that our relationship with God doesn’t have to be complicated. It can be in the simple aspects of life like eating fruit, or laughing, or giving a hug, or sitting quietly on a dock looking over a lake, or walking down the block that we receive the largest and most powerful revelations from God.
We often go looking for some profound insight into the mysteries of life or divinity or the operation of the world. We pray and seek and long to be given some major lightbulb moment when God is simply saying, “Sit down, eat a peach, and taste my joy.”
The real foundations of our lives of faith are really simple: God loves us, we are encouraged to love God in return. God came into the world in Jesus to be close to us and love us even deeper, we are encouraged to find Christ in the bodies of other humans. God’s love is a simple blessing, even if we can’t wrap our heads around it. God wants to be close to us and let us know that we’re loved so deeply and so profoundly that there’s nothing we can do to stop God from loving us.
I find it funny that it took me this entire month to make sense of a quote about the simplicity of God’s blessings. While I love the complex study of the Biblical text and trying to understand the rich messages being shared across the centuries, sometimes I have to be reminded to simplify my faith: let God love you and love God in return.
I hope during this month you will all be able to find a moment to, as Sister Joan suggests, let the juice of a peach roll down your chin. If, like me, peaches aren’t your favorite, maybe it’ll be an apple, or laughing with friends, or a hug from family, or a silent moment, or a favorite song that puts you in mind of our God. Let yourself experience the simplicity of our faith: God loves you.