Growing Fruit
“What are you doing?” I asked my daughter as she stood, eyes squeezed shut, body held taut, beneath a brightly colored umbrella at the swimming pool’s edge. Little grunts and “harrumphs” came out of her puckered mouth as she concentrated on the task at hand.
“I’m trying to GROW, Mommy,” Hannah declared with impatience. “If I just work a little harder, I might get taller!”
Suddenly, I nodded in understanding. Moments before, Hannah had approached a red-suited lifeguard in hopes of receiving a wristband to ride the waterslides that flanked the aquatic center. After stepping up to the official measuring stick that determined if a child was tall enough to handle the water rides, my four-and-a-half-year-old had been declared “too small.”
“Only two inches to go,” the lifeguard had encouraged with a sympathetic smile.
As my preschooler tried in vain to stretch her small stature, I reminded Hannah that God is in charge of her growing. While a body’s growth can be thwarted through unhealthy living and poor body care, it cannot be induced with wishful thinking or mere effort. Later, as I chuckled over my young daughter’s attempts to instantaneously “grow herself,” I realized that her earnest efforts were not unlike my own attempts to quickly grow those seemingly elusive fruits of the spirit.
My impatient desire to “grow up in Christ” can lead me to believe if I just try harder, then love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness and self control will sprout from my life. Unfortunately, my own effort doesn’t produce fruit any more than Hannah’s grunting produced extra inches. Growth- both of the body and the soul-is God’s job! While I can hinder my spiritual development by hardening my heart and refusing to surrender my soul to the work of the Lord, only the Holy Spirit can cultivate in my life the attractive characteristics listed in Ephesians 6.
I know, because like Hannah, I’ve tried to no avail to grow on my own. When I was expecting our fifth child, I was invited to write a Bible study on joy. As I began to investigate this tantalizing fruit throughout the pages of God’s word, I was zealous to acquire a taste of it for myself.
Little did I know just how much our Heavenly Father has to say about “joy.” From beginning to end, the Bible bursts with 214 references to this delightful fruit (NIV version). The Holy-Spirit inspired King David is the writer who had the most to say about joy, while Christ himself prayed that HIS JOY would be complete in us (John 15:11).
Despite the fact that I was exploring all God had to say about joy, I ruefully realized that my day to day living boasts little evidence of this attractive quality. Not surprisingly, the more I learned about joy, the more I wanted it- and quickly! After all, how can one write about what she doesn’t know first hand?
So, amidst morning sickness, fatigue and the general chaos of life with four small children, I painted on a happy face. With good intention, I tried to view my cup as half-full rather than half-empty. I worked harder at thinking positive thoughts. I smiled glowing smiles, and I even conducted random acts of kindness. But the truth is, when the day was done and my energy waned, when my agenda toppled and the unexpected arrived, the kind of joy I was working so hard to fabricate disappeared with the setting sun.
True joy thrives in darkness as well as in light (James 1:2-3). True joy survives the unexpected, the uncomfortable, and the unfamiliar twists and turns of life. True joy is evidence, as one clever person has said, of “Jesus Overflowing in You.” And that is the kind of fruit I want to bloom in the garden of my soul! I want God to grow in me the joy that CS Lewis calls, the serious business of heaven.
Today’s Treasure: So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow.
-1 Corinthians 3: 7
