Bare Fruit to Bear Fruit

Winter of 2010-2011 was a long winter for me.

Let's just say that as the leaves and fruit were drying up and falling off of trees during summer's change to fall and fall to winter, so did my spiritual fruit.

One by one, the apples of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control fell from my tree. (Galatians 5:22-23)

And one thing I've learned is that spiritual fruit should not fully emulate the lifestyle of actual fruit. Yes, both kinds of fruit are nourishment to the body, and yes, both kinds of fruit sprout, grow, and hang for people to come and pick from when hungry for that nourishment, but spiritual fruit should (ideally) never have a fall and winter season. They defy the vicissitudes of our seasonal calendar. Spiritual fruit should only know spring. :-)

I wouldn't be able to tell you exactly when and why each fruit dropped to the ground, but every month or so, I realized that I'd lost yet another fruit. And as I scrambled to find that lost fruit, another dropped.

It wasn't until Palm Sunday, that I realized that my fruit tree was completely bare.

No, this isn't a harsh self-reflection. It's a simple truth.

Now, I wasn't a complete wreck...there were remnants of my past fruit. Some days, a small branch of joy or faithfulness or love would sprout, but my days of abounding fruit were nowhere to be found.

Let me tell you what happens when you start losing your fruit: you become irritable, selfish, moody, distracted, pessimistic, defensive and dependent. Dependent on what? Anything that isn't God. It could be people, retail therapy, food, television, etc... And let me tell you, they all grow old VERY quickly.

Like the old folks used to say: if you never want to be disappointed, put your hope in God.

I was saved to bear fruit, so things had to change. John 15:8 states, "This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples." If you don't look at me and get a sense of joy, peace, love, or any of the other fruit, I am not doing my job as a believer. If I don't draw you near and allow my fruit to drop into your fruit basket (there should be enough to go around)...or encourage your fruit tree to grow...I'm not on the right path.

I feel that everyone gets into a rut and this was mine. I stopped bearing fruit.

With this in mind, I decided to encourage my own fruit tree to grow through this blog (and more praying, fasting and reading of the Divine Word of course).

Won't you take the journey with me?

You can never have too much fruit.