Fruit Trees

When Amber was born Stan and I decided that we would plant a tree in the yard for each of our children. Her tree was a live oak which, 26 years later, stands tall and strong and shades a large part of our back yard.

Ten years later, we chose citrus trees for the twins. We planted an orange and a grapefruit tree in the side yard near the well. Both trees died within a year. This is not an unusual occurrence in my life because not only do I not have a green thumb, I actually have 10 black fingers. I kill much of what I plant. In spite of this, we decided to give it another try. This time we went to a nursery and bought larger trees. We got fertilizer, plant food and specific instructions for our trees. Within two years the trees produced fragrant blossoms that perfumed the whole yard. Soon tiny green fruit appeared. Unfortunately, we never got anything more than tiny, green fruit. It seems that when our house was built, the builder dumped all of the trash in the yard and covered it with a small layer of dirt and sodded over it. This meant that our poor citrus trees didn't develop the deep roots needed to produce the tasty fruit we were looking for.

The Bible compares us to fruit trees quite a bit. We are told that you know a tree by its fruit. Sometimes we get excited when we see fruit start to appear only to find that it doesn't mature because there are no deep roots. Yes, we can show some fruit as baby Christians, and that is good. It encourages us all to see change come about because of the Word of God. The problem comes when the fruit never matures. We can not be content to produce inedible green fruit. We need to follow what God tells us in Psalms 1:2-3 "But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither."

If we want to produce good, life-sustaining fruit, we need to be in God's Word. We need to spend time every day reading, meditating and memorizing what God has to say to us. We need to be in a church where we are continually refocused on God's revelation of Himself through the Scriptures. This blessed Word is better than all of the fertilizer and plant food you can find anywhere else. This is what will produce an abundant crop of mature, sweet fruit that will be a blessing to many. So, how is your tree doing?