Persimmon Perspectives

When I first moved to Mississippi and I saw a persimmon, I was shocked.  Persimmons are almost the size of an average tomato.  That was shocking!  You see I grew up with a persimmon tree in my backyard.  It was absolutely good for nothing, except maybe some shade.  The shade wasn't worth it though.  The persimmons never got bigger than a cherry tomato and they only had three states:  green, too ripe, and on the ground causing a mess.  You see that persimmon tree sat where second base was. Many good homeruns in our wiffle ball games was knocked down by that tree.   I bet my homerun count would be double if not for that tree.  The limbs were too small and too tight to climb it.  They started too high up the tree to do much to it.  The only thing the tree was ever good for was daring somebody and getting nasty.  We would dare each other to bite into a green persimmon.  It will suck the saliva out of your mouth.  One bite parches the mouth. Saliva glands close off and sometimes picket inside the mouths of 9 year old boys who dare each other with green persimmons.  They went from that state to on the ground and nasty in a few hours (at least it seemed).  Don't slide into second under a persimmon tree or you will spell like....you slid into second under a persimmon tree.  Its worse than throwing a rotten tomato at somebody.  It just gets you nasty. 
With that being my history of persimmons, can you imagine what I thought when I came to Mississippi and saw them as big as tomatoes and people talking about cutting them up and eating them? Some people are just pure-T nasty!  I bet if they slid under a tree that has lost a bunch of them, they would not eat another.  My perspective of persimmons is that they are a bad fruit.  (Please don't be bringing me no bag of persimmons.  I'll wait til mater season.) Once I was exposed to it as a bad fruit, I probably will not be convinced that it can be a good fruit.  Hey!  Jesus said that today in Luke 6:43- For no good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit, ⁴⁴for each tree is known by its own fruit.  I have just got to ask:  what do people think about your fruit? Once they have seen it bad, it is hard to convince them that it can be good.  Let's bear good fruit today!