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When Faithfulness Becomes Fruitlessness


 I have high expectations for my fruit trees this year. All of them are in the ground now, released from their confining pots and barrels. Each is placed near others that will help with pollination, and each is in it's optimal sun exposure. My expectation of fruitfulness feels justified because this year I have been faithful to tend to the needs of each tree. My dear husband helped me dig and haul, I used what my brother taught me about pruning, I gave each time and water and mulch and sun. I have much more to learn, but so far I see blossoms giving way to little buds of pear, cherry, asian pear, and one tiny peach.

Remember my little, one-pear tree from a previous post? I knew that little tree wouldn't bear much, because I was only tending to the needs that kept it alive, not to what it needed to be fruitful. 

My heart, and my life, totally have places where I'm only tending to what's needed to sustain life, not what's needed to be fruitful. 

What if my little batch of trees were fruitless this summer? What if I thought I had been faithful, with no fruit?  

What if I had left them in their pots, with crowded, stifled roots? What if I had placed them nowhere near other trees of their kind, nowhere near the bees they need, and waited for blossoms to appear? What if, more likely still, I had faithfully watered them every, every, every day, and waited for bountiful fruit? 

What if my faithfulness had been wasted on being faithful to the wrong things? What if I tied pretty ribbons on their branches every spring, posted a picture and added a hashtag? What if I poured pepsi in their pots and barrels every morning? It all sounds ridiculous, but boy, do we water our SOULS like that??

I can be faithful, year after year, to scratch away at a clean, tidy home. I can be faithful season after season to decorate, celebrate, commemorate. I can be faithful daily to eat, drink water, exercise- to stay alive- and bear only that one pear's worth of fruit. 

Friends, let's not let faithfulness turn to fruitlessness. Let's not be faithful in only the things that keep us alive. Let's not be faithful in the wrong things.

Let us be faithful to what our Creator says will bear fruit.

John15 â€œI am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.

“I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.


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