God's Sweet Fruit

The path that leads to the bus stop is cordoned off. It would be really interesting if it was police tape, and the area was a crime scene and there was a body somewhere.

But, ah…it is a crime scene and there is evidence of electric saw activity. The tape is Highland Council stuff. They are cutting down trees that border the field. They are lines of fir trees, not particularly ancient, not particularly pretty. They are not remarkable at all. You don’t have to be old or pretty or remarkable to justify your existence, do you? If so, I stand no chance at all.

I wonder whether the trees are diseased, or whether with some low branches which tempt youngsters in climbing them, they have become a health and safety issue. In this world of claiming compensation, does mummy or daddy worry about little Johnny climbing said tree, falling and being injured.

I have just been watching ‘The Green Planet’ with David Attenborough. My pine trees are far from the rainforest but there is a biodiversity issue at work. The birds and the insects, the slugs and snails and the fungi – that intricate give and take existence has been pulled down. I don’t see them planting any new trees. They are not leaving anything behind that can become something new. A man and his trailer pulled up to collect the wood.

An earlier documentary on the life of plants. ‘The Private Life of Plants’ was also documented by David Atten borough. I called it PLOP. One of the episodes dealt with reproduction. It was all about the creative ways plants had of seeding the next generation. Flies spent the night stuck inside a flower, not to be slowly consumed, but to get covered in pollen and released the nest day to find another flower to spend the night it, pollinating as they went. Huge forest fires blazed, their heat releasing the seeds and the cleared ground producing the next generation of saplings and a new forest.

I have been reading about seeds and fruit and sowing and harvesting as part of my morning quiet time.

‘No good tree bears bad fruit, nor does a bad tree bear good fruit. Each tree is recognized by its own fruit. People do not pick figs from thornbushes, or grapes from briers.’ Luke 6:43-44.

Last week I had been learning about build a house on rock and the need to maintain the house afterwards. What happens after you move in matters. There is something similar going on in planting a tree. It is not left to just simply grow. How a tree flourishes or not depends on the weather, on the soil, on the bugs and bacteria.  How the fruit turns out depends on these things too. The weather might be out of our control, but other things aren’t. Just as the house needed to be looked after, the tree needs care too. 

 

I lived for a while in Cyprus. I lived in an upstairs flat. On one side of the building was a grape vine. I watched as my landlord in the flat below me tended the vine, snipping here and there, particularly when the grapes were showing. He constantly pruned the clusters of grapes to make sure they had enough space to fill out.

We don’t just bear fruit as Christians. We are fruit. We don’t just give away the word we are the word lived out before people. The kind of lives we live determine the kind of people we attract. The perseverance we demonstrate tells them that life with God is worth pursuing.

Fruit is nature’s way of reproducing. Everything that the tree is, the fruit contains in the blueprint of its DNA. We are fruit. Everything that God is, we contain in seed form.  He is reproducing himself in us. We become reproducers of Him, in others, when we share our faith, see people come into a friendship with God and teach them His ways.

Let me be sweet fruit.