One Apple?

 

The fall is here, which means apple harvest at the Waldron household.  We have three apple trees and two of them are quite large and so you can imagine how long it will take to harvest all the fruit.

There will be apple sauce and pies and jams.  There will be apples aplenty for school lunches.  Who knows what all the glorious things we will be able to do with our harvest?

Or, maybe not...

You see, on all three of our trees, there is only one, solitary apple.  

There's a picture book that I always enjoyed that is called, "Who's got the apple?"  (by Jan Loof).  It revolves around the apple of a store keeper who is raising a single, beautiful fruit on a little apple tree in his backyard.  The apple has many adventures until ends up in the hands of the man in the striped suit.

Unlike that store keeper, our (my) plan wasn't to have only one apple.  Further, this isn't any kind of amazing or special apple.

Each year, I have tried pruning our trees and fertilizing them.  I read books about improving apple harvest.  I even prayed that my apple trees would shape up and do better.  Nothing really has helped a whole lot and every year we get between one and three apples.

Galatians 5:22-23 says, "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law."

I look at the world around me and I don't see many of these fruits exemplified.  It seems as though kindness went out of fashion in the late 19th century and gentleness about a hundred years before that.  Few are joyful and don't get me started about self-control.

In the church, where these things should be ever present, I am afraid the harvest these days is pretty scanty.  "Oh yes," we say.  "I was patient last week.  I think.  And then, there was that time when, if I wasn't totally joyful, I was kind of happy.  And my kids ate the oreos before I could get to them, so that was kind of self control."

Maybe we Christians have too much in common with my apple trees.  The harvest just isn't what either it could or should be.

Should a Christian be satisfied with a harvest that happens once or twice a month?  Is God satisfied with an output like that?

Whatever our harvest is today, our focus must be on increasing it.  We must listen to the Spirit and let Him prune and nourish our lives till we are bearing everyone of His fruits and lots of them.

The harvest isn't scanty because of the Spirit.  He is the same as He ever was, willing to work wonders in our hearts.  It is the fault of His people who no longer are focused on listening to His voice and doing His will...

Or, even bearing His fruit.