While my mom and I were canning peaches the other day, in between bites of juicy peach off the pit, I started thinking about the fruit of the original sin. For some reason, we always attach an apple to that first sin in the Garden of Eden, but I’m not sure that’s quite right. Apples are pretty, and healthy, and tasty, but tempting? Compare a freshly picked apple to a freshly picked tree-ripened peach, dripping with juicy flavorful flesh. You take a bite out of a fresh peach and the aroma instantly fills the room. Your teeth sink into the intoxicating flesh and the surrounding world mists away. And then someone invites you to share their bite of peach and how, oh how can you resist?
Peaches are a more fragile fruit than apples. They bruise more easily, they ripen more quickly and don’t have as long of a shelf life as apples. I mean, you can juggle an apple (yes, I can), but juggle a peach and you’ve ruined it. I think a gorgeous peach tree, loaded with this delicate, fragile fruit and a “do not eat” sign makes so much more sense than an apple tree. The fruit matches the crime. They took something beautiful and full of life that God had cautioned them to treat with care and respect – and they bruised it, forever damaged for all future generations.
An apple, in my opinion, just isn’t as appealing (ahem, no pun intended). Even the freshest, sweetest apple, doesn’t melt in your mouth the way a peach does. And we know how humans, especially in the face of sin, prefer to take the easier route. Face it, apples, you just aren’t as seductive as peaches.
I rambled on, and my mom agreed with me, that quite possibly it could have been a peach instead of an apple.Then she reminded me “but the problem wasn’t with the apple or peach on the tree, it was the pair on the ground.” Yeah, read that one again. And now you know where I get my awesome sense of humor from.