Devotionals

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I’ve picked a few of people’s favorite fruits. As I child, I picked: fresh strawberries and raspberries from a neighbors garden, plumbs from a best girlfriend’s tree, Bartlett pears from our back yard, black berries from a fence line and Macintosh apples from a sprawling orchard. While living in California, I helped my husband pick Valencia oranges as an approaching hard freeze threatened the crop of a rancher. Our Alabama fig tree provided plump finger food.

God wants us to provide spiritual fruit, which is short in supply. It is never out of season. When others try to pick fruit from my branches, will they find a bumper crop? “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control (Galatians 5: 22-23a NKJ).” Am I bearing the fruit of faithfulness or rotting figs? Fruits satisfy our cravings for something sweet.

I have eaten both persimmons and crab apples; believe me, at times my fruit is far from sweet. I want fruit gatherers to be “pickin- grinin and growin” more like Christ. The fastidious farmer, who hopes for heavy-laden fruitful branches, prunes my fruit tree regularly. He is not annoyed if the fruit falls from sagging branches to the ground below. Easy access allows the needy to pick, polish and grow up in the Lord. Open a Bible; it’s the most reliable fruit seed catalog available!

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