Over the course of the summer, a few of the children have loved foraging different berries, herbs, and now, more recently, wild apples in the meadow behind our house. They’re dented, little apples, misshapen and tart… the kind most people would leave for the deer. But the kids enthusiastically gathered them anyway, by the dozens, with the intention of making an apple crisp for the family.
They spent the better part of a pleasant afternoon huddled around a little table on the back deck, peeling and cutting, peeling and cutting.
They sat together for hours as they worked, sometimes in quiet rhythm, but mostly just enjoying each other’s company, chatting as the sun arched across the sky and the sunflowers’ faces followed the light. After the processing, they came into the kitchen to make the crumble layer next, which meant that by the time we had eaten dinner, the day’s focus was crowned with the reward of a huge apple crisp, cinnamon-y and golden, that had fueled their steady work.
Foraging has become a passion around here in our pocket of the rolling hills and forests of the east coast.
The other night on our evening walk, Ben and I came across a little Charlie Brown apple tree, spindly and growing out of the ditch. We later told the children about it so that they could forage a little more the next day. When my daughter came looking for a basket, I suggested one that was nearby. She was sure they wouldn’t need one that big, but took it anyway since our options were slim.
Off they trundled into the cool evening air with Ben and the stroller—a little posse of enthusiastic humans on the best kind of treasure hunt.
When they returned, they couldn’t wait to report on the surprise yield they had found. To their delight, just beyond the little tree we had noticed was another—this one with ripe, abundant fruit! So they filled the basket once with the small apples, and then again with the big, plump ones, tucking the overflow into the stroller.
The little boys tumbled into the house as if they had uncovered hidden treasure, eager to give me the full play-by-play of their expedition. They had expected little, and found more than they imagined—pure delight!
As we marvelled together and admired the very juicy apples, I couldn’t help but think of the story of the widow’s oil—the small jar that, because of her willingness to steward what little she had, never ran dry.
Out of what looked like nothing came provision enough to sustain a household through famine.
I am learning to love… and even crave… more of Heaven’s economy: the way that tending what feels too small, too easily overlooked, seems to bend time and matter into alignment. The overlooked thing becomes the opening. The unseen multiplies in ways the mind alone can’t predict.
Sometimes abundance reveals itself only after we have gathered the hidden and the humble close to our hearts… I often think of this in relation to children themselves. In an age where the smallest ones are overlooked, dismissed, or even unwanted in the first place, opening our arms to them draws down a wealth beyond anything the world can measure. Each child carries a mystery, a spark of eternity entrusted into fragile form. When we receive them, we step into stewardship of treasures that reshape our very sense of what it means to be rich. The little things—those whom the world passes by—become living doorways into an overflow we could never have imagined was waiting for us.
The basket filled twice.
First with the tiny apples, hard-won by small hands, and then again with the bounty of fruit waiting just beyond our sight. A simple foraging trip, yet to my magical children it shimmered like a miracle.
It did to me too.
In the Kingdom, alignment transforms what seems like scarcity into provision, and even a basket that feels far too large in the seen becomes the perfect vessel for what Heaven has already set aside in the unseen.
My children are living parables to me, carriers of hidden treasure I might have overlooked on my own. They keep calling me back into presence, into that quiet rhythm where even the smallest, dented things are gathered with gratitude—and in that gathering, are revealed as something so much more radiant.
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