Fruit

I grew up on a dairy farm a few miles outside Lovell, Wyoming. Obviously, I have many memories from life on the farm. Many adventures. Many challenges. Let's just say life was not boring.

One memory I am going to share today may seem a little strange at first. Hopefully it will make sense when I am done.

Growing up we had five apple trees behind our house, and they were great. They ran parallel to the dirt road that went by my house. Anyone driving down that road, especially those that lived on the road, could enjoy those five trees in every season in all of their glory. They really were beautiful. Even greater then their beauty was the fact that most years they produced an abundant harvest. Most years the branches were so full of apples that they drooped from all the weight. One of those "childhood anticipations" for me was waiting for all those apples to ripen. I used to love to go out a pick and eat one "fresh of the vine".

Anyone that has ever grown any kind of fruit tree already knows that they take work on the front end of the growing season before you ever get the harvest on the back end. It takes cultivation of the soil. It takes pruning of the branches. It takes water. And yes, it even takes some fertilizer. It takes work to produce fruit.

Oh ,how this life-truth applies to OUR lives. To produce "fruit" it takes work. Just like that tree, for us it takes cultivation, pruning, water, and yes even fertilizer.

Here is my point and/or challenge. Allow it to happen. Allow yourself to be "pruned" on the front-end of a "growing season" in your life to then allow yourself to produce fruit when it's harvest time. I don't know what needs to be pruned or cultivated in your life, in your heart. I only know what needs "pruned" in my life.

Like Jeff shared in one of his sermons (I think it went something like this): "One of the saddest things in life is to see a plant that is alive but is producing no fruit". We were created to produce not just exist.

My childhood farm is still there. That same dirt road is still there. But something HAS changed. Where once five glorious trees stood, only weeds grow now. Same location, same weather, same old soil. Someone driving down that road now would have no clue that in that spot once stood five of the greatest apple trees you would ever want to see. Now---WEEDS.