Apple of my eye

Psalm 17:8a

Keep me as the apple of your eye…

The apple of my eye is that apple which, as I look at it up in the tree, I can tell is the glory of all apples. It is perfect, round and red in the way that says to me it is at the peak of its taste. It is not too green and therefore a touch too sour. It is not over ripe and therefore slightly mealy. It is perfectly crisp and sweet. It is the king apple, the one the tree has poured all of its best sugar and energy into. It is the treasured apple. The one the tree has put up higher than normal so that it cannot be reached easily by the normal passerby. It will take someone with a sharp eye and a deep desire to reach this apple. It is the precious apple. The one the tree has camouflaged carefully so as to avoid the sharp eyes of the birds. Those who just want a casual bite or two and then move on. This apple is to be reserved for a long slow delightful meal of exquisite enjoyment.

David is saying something truly precocious. I am that apple to God. I am that delightful sweetness to the one who is both the tree and enjoyer of the fruit. He is the tree who has put all of his energy and sweetness into me. He is the one who has hidden me away and placed me beyond where the birds can just pick at me out of spite. He is the one who has blinded those who will not truly enjoy me. Who will just pick me and throw me away. He is the tree who has germinated me, grown me, filled me, protected me.

And he has reserved me for himself and picked me at the peak of ripeness because he truly enjoys a perfectly beautiful and ripe apple. He is the one, the only one who can truly, completely, perfectly sit down and enjoy me to the full.

How is that possible that God could do that for me, me the unjust, the unlovely, the unsweet? Here’s how. The true apple of God’s eye was his son Jesus Christ who was all of those things and more to God His Father. God the Father gave him over to the picking of the birds and to the unwashed hands of passersby so that I, in his place might become the apple of God’s eye. And this gift is to all who will take it, to those who will simply receive it by having that same precociousness as David to believe it.