There have been these clusters of orange mushrooms growing at the bases of trees in and around my yard in the past month, and a wise biologist I know identified them as Jack-o’-Lantern mushrooms that form on wood near the bottoms of trees in the Midwest in the summer and fall. While these mushrooms are pretty to look at, they are actually poisonous.
I am reminded of the fruit growing on the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Garden of Eden. The Bible says that Eve considered the fruit “good for food” and “a delight to the eyes” (Genesis 3:6). So “she took of its fruit and ate” (Genesis 3:6). The eating of the fruit proved to be deadly to her and to Adam, who also ate, because it introduced sin into the world, and “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23). Like the mushrooms by my tree, the fruit was pretty but poisonous, and we wish we could have been there in the Garden of Eden to say to Eve, “Look out! Don’t eat that!”
We might consider ourselves “oaks of righteousness,“ but things that are pretty but poisonous to our souls are still trying to entice us into turning away from God. As St. Peter tells us, “Be watchful.” (1 Peter 5:8). In other words, “Look out!” Don’t let anything come between you and God.
