The lesson of the blueberry

 So, it hit me as I made my daily garden raid, there's something to be learned from from these blueberries.
     A few days I was feeling just completely emotionally depleted. I was exhausted, and just felt like I had gotten to the point of flailing. The point where you're just so tired that you can't lift your arm, all it does is kinda move. In order to get it on a table or counter you have to twist your body and flail it to get enough momentum to just swing it over. Then you just slump it down and do everything you can to keep from moving again. That's the level of emotional tiredness I was feeling.
      But, God was teaching me something, I realized that when I step out from under him and try to make myself grow, my shallow reserves and limited power run out in in incredibly short time. I'm trying to make myself get to Japan, make myself raise $6000 dollars, and make my relationship with Loren improve. Trying to make myself do all of that not only is exhausting, but had completely exhausted me. I, actually no, God pointed out to me that:

Ecl 3:1 For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.
1 Peter 5:6-7 Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you. 
Col 2:18-19  Let no one disqualify you ... puffed up without reason by his sensuous mind, and not holding fast to the Head, from whom the whole body, nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments, grows with a growth that is from God.

Basically what I got is that God provides the growth, he provides it in his time, at the rate that we need. And if we humble ourselves under him (and his timing), he'll at the proper time exalt us!

So how do the blueberries fit in? Blueberries actually have fruit on them for over a month before they start ripening. It's a slow process that takes time as the bush feeds each berry and gives it the proper materials and time needed for it to mature. However there are some berries that try to rush ahead on their own steam. Oh they'll turn blue, but they're small, shriveled up and worthless. No, they're not a berry that's been turned into a raisin by staying in the sun too long. They turn blue when they're only small and barely past being a flower.
     When I try to "grow" faster than God provides, my energy will fade, and sin will begin to cannibalize what little I already have. If I don't live in the present that he's given me and allow God's work to have it's place and time in me I will fade and waste the potential I would have had! Not only will "slowing" down to God's timing allow me to grow better, but I'll grow faster!

He really does use the foolish things of this world to confound the wise doesn't He?