To Enjoy the Harvest
Read: Luke 13:6-9
Fruit. It’s a big part of our lives. We enjoy its flavor and nutrients. We know it’s an integral part of health given to us by our Creator.
Our Lord Himself speaks to us in Holy Scripture about being trees that bear good fruit while He Himself is the True Vine. He even warns us that we need to cut off the “branches” of our lives that don’t bear good fruit; even how the trees that don’t bear fruit will be cut down and burnt. We may recall the time He cursed the fig tree that bore no fruit. It seems that Our Lord is trying to seriously teach us something here about life and growth.
What struck me further about fruit was when I was looking on my kitchen counter at a few pears picked from the one remaining tree from a small orchard that once existed on our property. It seems the former owner of our house was a gardener at the Ford Estate. And now this small bunch of pears was a symbol of the “fruits” in my own life. How many times I could and should have bore good “fruit” when given the “seed” and “fertilizer” to do so. We were told in Genesis to be “Fruitful and multiply,” that our lives were to be about growth for the Kingdom of God.
And I was also thinking of the tragedy of when the “fruits” of our lives are not allowed to grow; how much richer our lives would be if we, trusting in the True Vine of Christ, were more than merely satisfied to be the “branches” of the tree—so we could bear good fruit.
But LACRIMAE SUNT RERUM—"Things have their tears” as the poet Vergil wrote. How many times have we wondered about how the “fruits” of our lives either grow or die? The few pears that I was able to gather from the old pear tree would have been a great dessert if they had been able to fully ripen before the branch on the tree broke in a storm. We have lost people and things; so often, it seems, before their proper time.
When I was a young man, before I bought this property with its few fruit trees, I cared only for the “fruit” of life and had little love for the labor of pruning. If I had “pruned” my life more often, and appreciated what the Lord had given me, how much more “fruit” I could have borne for the Kingdom!
Now I sense the loss of potential in life when things don’t get to a chance to mature. Even with careful pruning, there are the “storms” of our lives that blow away and break our spirits. Then there is the danger that we forget that we must be the branch to the True Vine; that He allows these storms to help us “prune” our lives of attachments; or even to warn us of the need for more “fertilizer” and spiritual care. After all, God created the Garden for us to live in. He created us to grow; in turn He expects us to tend the “trees” of our lives as well as we can; sometimes pruning; sometimes adding some manure to the base.
And this in turn provides us consolation in the potential of the fruit that remains on the tree; fruit on branches that have not broken — which in turn provides the hope that we will be able to enjoy the harvest with our Lord in the heavenly banquet to come.
David Smith
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