The reason pawpaws came to mind nine years ago is lost in the frustrating mist of my memory. You may recall the children’s song, “Picking up pawpaws, putting ‘em in your pocket… way down yonder in the pawpaw patch.” Isn’t pawpaw an imaginary fruit? I mean, are children’s songs a reliable source of facts? (Who from Alabama wears a banjo on his knee?) I thought about pawpaws only long enough to be agnostic on the subject.
But my hard agnosticism (I can’t and don’t care to know) gave way to the genes of my agricultural ancestry. I became curious. So, I commanded my intel processor to gather electrons throughout the interwebs. I learned about Neal Peterson and his lifelong pawpaw research. He is the pawpaw parson, extolling the reality and virtues of North America’s native tropical fruit. I placed my online order for trees.
At that point, I was like the philosophers Paul encountered at the Areopagus (Acts 17). Their monument to an unknown god was their acknowledgement that perhaps there is more to know. I had never seen, much less tasted pawpaw fruit but was open to the possibility. My grafted whips were an acknowledgement that there is more to know.
“We want to know,” the erudite thinkers told Paul. He obliged with facts. The Lord of heaven and earth made you. He sets your time and place. He remains close enough for you to seek and find Him. He gave proof by raising Jesus from the dead. You find Him when you repent and believe. That day, some of Paul’s hearers did.
Beyond his Mars Hill sermon, Paul references his hunger to know. On repentance: “I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh” (Rom. 7:18). On assurance: “I know whom I have believed and I am convinced that He is able to guard what I have entrusted to Him until that day” (2 Tim. 1:12). On eternity: “Now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known” (1 Cor. 13:12).
The truth is near. It’s in children’s songs. “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.” It’s in the Bible. St. Jerome said, “The Scriptures are shallow enough for a babe to come and drink without fear of drowning and deep enough for a theologian to swim in without ever touching the bottom.” What’s needed is your curiosity. Let him who cannot find light open the shutters.
After nine long years, those Peterson whips produced five pawpaw fruits. That I have tasted and know has disabused me of my agnostic obliviousness. “O taste and see that the Lord is good; How blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him!” (Psa. 34:8).