On oak leaves, oranges, and tomato seeds

Eleven wheelbarrows full of oak leaves.

That’s what my younger sister and I shoveled on Saturday afternoon. Unlike the elms, sycamores, birches, and maples that lose their leaves in the fall–which seems to be the more logical thing to do–those towering, moss-laden southern oaks lose their leaves in the spring. And that means that we get to get out the shovels, rakes, and wheelbarrows twice a year. On the other hand, we never have to shovel snow...

When the oaks lose their dead, brown leaves, new green buds get pushed on the branches. As we pick oranges and lemons bursting ripe off the trees, we plant the cucumber and tomato seeds. The old leaves must come off before the new ones come on. One crop of fruit ripens as another sprouts.

Isn’t our spiritual life like a tree? We let the old man fall to the ground as the new man grows. We can’t put on the new man until after the old is gone. But now you yourselves are to put off all these: anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy language out of your mouth. Do not lie to one another, since you have put off the old man with his deeds, and have put on the new man who is renewed in knowledge according to the image of Him who created him (Colossians 3:8-10). The command to put off is before the command to put on. Is Paul trying to give us a hint here? Yes! The old man and the new man are two different people, and the one must die before the other can be born. Just as Jesus said that a good tree cannot bear bad fruit (Matthew 7:18), the new man can’t have anything of the old man–no dead leaves and no bad fruit. We need to put our old man to death to make way for the new.

Our lives bear fruit just like our garden does. As healthy Christians, we should be bearing a lot of it! Not just one crop of one kind of fruit...it’s not enough just to be patient once a week. We should always be bearing lots of fruit. Love, joy, peace, longsuffering (patience), kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control–our lives are an entire garden! Because we are growing so many types of fruits, we may be in different stages for each crop. Maybe joy is ripe and we can benefit from its fruit as we plant the seeds of self-control. There should never be a time when we are not tending fruit. Sometimes, the fruit may just be a tiny seedling, but even then, it’s growing. Maybe the only evidence that there is fruit growing is that we can smell the first budding blossom. But those little blossoms in March turn into oranges by January, and the first seedlings of February are tomatoes by June. He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ (Philippians 1:6). God is the Master Gardener Who will faithfully tend the garden in each one of us.

What kind of fruit are you growing?