By Dave Benner
My favorite Mayberry character was Barney Fife. My favorite line he used was, “Gotta nip it in the bud, gotta nip it!” Maybe you too can picture him saying this with both hands on his gun belt.
Perhaps you don’t know the meaning of this saying. Simply put, Barney was saying that some activity had to be immediately stopped before it grew into a bigger problem. I believe the saying came from the practice of thinning fruit trees.
Most tree fruits like apples, pears, plums and especially peaches need to be thinned. If you don’t thin them, you end up with many small, hard fruits that are useless. Today, orchards do this chemically but in the old days this was handwork. I remember my sister thinning peaches in the 50’s by hand. She was given a cutter (nipper) and instructed to cut the fruit buds or blossoms so that none were closer than six or eight inches to another.
There is a scripture found in James that I think encourages nipping sin in the bud. “But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed. Then, when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin, and sin, when it is full grown, brings forth death” (James I:14 &15).
The Bible has many warnings about falling from grace. This warning tells us the progression that leads to death. We must not let sin become part of our walk. When we find ourselves drawn away from what the Bible teaches, we need to “Nip it in the bud!” We must not let sin blossom and become full grown. Our souls are at stake.
If we are tempted to let sin into our lives, maybe we can picture Barney telling us, “Gotta Nip It.” Then God give us the courage to do it!