I’ve been watching the apples swell on the fruit trees these last months. Once pale buds, they have grown round and smooth and red or gold. I’ve observed their growth as the weeks flowed on through summer. My efforts include the fertilizing, spraying, and watering. The trees’ efforts produced apples.
But does it take any effort for an apple tree to grow fruit? I studied the way the small apples grow, how their stems cling fast to the branches, how the branches are firmly attached to the main trunk and the roots go deep and wide in the soil beneath.
No, I decided, an apple tree produces apples as naturally as I breathe. It doesn’t take any extra effort for it to grow fruit. Because it is an apple tree, it can’t help but produce those crimson or yellow globes we like to eat.
I asked myself, isn’t that a picture of the kind of Christian I should be? If I am a small twig attached to the main trunk, which is God, then producing the fruit of a Christlike life should happen as certainly as season follows season.
A branch that is healthy and growing from the apple tree isn’t about to grow a lot of thistles and briars. If I am serious about serving Christ as the King of my life and am attached to him by prayer, my Bible, and my church, it should be just as difficult for me to sprout thorns and prickles as it would be for an apple tree—although in my case, thorns and prickles are any works that don’t bring glory to God’s name.
Excerpts in today’s reading in Colossians 1:4-6 read, “We heard of your faith in Christ Jesus, and of the love which ye have . . . For the hope which is laid up for you in heaven . . . and bringeth forth fruit, as it doth also in you, since the day ye heard of it, and knew the grace of God in truth.”
Faith, love, and hope are mentioned here. They will bring forth fruit in us, and the growth, however small, should have begun the day we heard of God’s promises and knew the grace of God and believed it all in our hearts.
It won’t be in the same shape as those shiny round fruits that hang heavy on my apple trees each autumn. It will be a different kind of fruit entirely, one that forms in my heart and then reaches out to those around me in every part of my life.
And to the people around me, my fruit should be just as noticeable as that which hangs from the branches of the apple trees.
| Prayer | Reflection |
| Fill my heart with your seeds, Lord, and water them with your Word. Teach me how to bear fruit for you. | How can I begin to grow God’s fruit today? |