We have four beautiful mature apricot trees in our front yard. I marvel at the quantities of fruit that these trees produce. They put on thousands of blossoms that turn into green little fruits. These fruits strain the tree and ultimately cause its beautiful brittle branches to break. So each spring, we start the daunting task of thinning the fruit in the apricot trees. From each cluster, we remove the small and the damaged apricots. Sadly, it is not enough to save the tree branches. We then remove fruit that is good but not as good as the others until the tree can handle the maturing weight. This year we removed over 10 gallons of tiny apricots from our trees!
Our hope in thinning our trees is to preserve the strength for the best fruit. We anticipate the big juicy apricots that will come. It also protects the trees from carrying loads that will ultimately break them. The time I spent in the trees caused me to think of Elder Dallin H Oaks talk from this last general conference. He stated “just because something is good is not a sufficient reason for doing it. The number of good things we can do far exceeds the time available to accomplish them. Some things are better than good, and these are the things that should command priority attention in our lives. ... We have to forego some good things in order to choose others that are better or best.”
As our lives become busy, let us focus on those things that bring the best future return on our investment. Let us avoid cumbering our trees of daily life with activities that pull our strength from the fruit that matter most and that threaten to wear us out. May we be blessed as we strive to choose the best fruit in our lives.
Brother Tyler Wyatt
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