God’s Fruit Stand

The story is told of a geologist who was exploring an area of the Swiss Alps in the early thirties. He came upon a vast stretch of ugly, forbidding, desolate, barren land. His first impulse was not to move into that uninviting area. Then he saw an old man standing at the edge of the wasteland. On the old man’s bent back was strapped a sack of acorns. In his hand he held a length of iron pipe. The geologist watched in fascination as the old man used the iron pipe to punch holes into the ground. And each time he did this he reached into his sack for an acorn and put it in the hole. When the geologist asked why he was doing this, the old man replied, “I’ve decided to do something useful for the world in my final years. I’ve planted more than 100,000 acorns. Perhaps only one tenth of them will grow. But that’s better than nothing.” Thirty years later,…