The Fruit That Grows in You

Far away, in little churches, there were people Paul loved. And he wrote them a letter, because something was tangling them up inside.

Perhaps you know the feeling. You try so hard to be good. You clench your fists and bite your lip and think, Today I will not be unkind. Today I will share. Today I will not get angry. And then, by lunchtime, the meanness slips out anyway, and you feel cross with yourself, and tied in knots, and tired.

Paul knew that knot. He had felt it too.

So listen, he wrote to the people far away. And listen, little one, because somehow he was writing to you as well.

You cannot squeeze goodness out of yourself like the last bit of toothpaste from the tube. You can push and push, and it only makes you tired and sad. Love does not grow that way.

Think of how apples grow. The tree never strains and groans, Come on, apples, hurry up! The tree simply stays joined to its roots and drinks the deep water, and then, while the wind moves in its leaves and the days go by, the apples come. Round and sweet. The tree did not make them by trying hard. They grew because the tree was alive.

Long before, on his last night with his friends, Jesus told them the same thing. I am the vine, he said. You are the branches. Stay joined to me.

There is a Spirit, Paul wrote. The Spirit of Jesus himself. And when Jesus comes to live inside a person, close as breath, he begins to grow his own fruit there.

And oh, what fruit it is.

Love, for the people who are hard to love.
Joy, that bubbles up even on grey days.
Peace, where everything inside used to be a storm.
Patience. Kindness. Goodness. Gentleness.
And the steady strength to keep on choosing them.

You do not make this fruit. You could never squeeze it out. It grows. Jesus grows it in you, the way the sun grows the apple, while you stay close to him and drink him in.

And Paul wanted them to hold this next part gently.

The fruit is only just beginning.

Right now it is small. Like the first green bud on a branch in spring, when the snow has barely gone. Some days you will still feel the old knot. Some days the meanness will still slip out. And you might think nothing is growing at all.

But it is. Slowly and surely, under the bark where no one can see, the Spirit has truly, already begun.

And what Jesus begins, he does not leave half-grown. The little green bud will swell and ripen and one day stand full and golden, when he makes the whole world new. The love in you now is the very first taste of all the love you will be filled with then.

So you do not have to clench your fists anymore.

Stay close to Jesus, the way a branch stays on the vine, and let him do the growing. One small green bud today. A whole orchard on the morning he comes.