When I was little, one of my favorite breakfasts was to open a can of fruit cocktail, with its peaches, pears, and fake-cherry grapes.
I have more varieties of fruit in my yard than I have fruit trees or vines. My cherry tree has five different grafts on a cherry root stock. I have one nectarine and three peach varieties on one trunk, plum, pluot (hybrid of plum and apricot), two kinds of almonds, Asian pear, black and white mulberries, and don’t get me started on citrus! They’re called fruit cocktail trees. They’re meant to be space savers, but the branches also pollinate each other for a better harvest.
People marvel at how many fruits I have, assuming I know how to do grafting. No, I buy them at the nursery! It’s a science to successfully marry an alien sprout to the trunk.
The process is instructive: a sharp cut is made to the host plant, a bud from another plant is placed up against the cut (so it gets sap and nutrients), then is bound tightly so the wounds of both plants are healed and become strong.
Grafters often start with a hardy, pest- and disease-resistant root stock and trunk. Your gorgeous roses look very different from the puny blooms of the suckers, because the desirable part has been grafted to the wild roots. Ever taste an ornamental orange? (Don’t.) Their roots are better adapted to resist bugs and harsh weather than the tender, grafted stock of sweet oranges.
Olive trees can live for thousands of years. After a few decades, though, they can't bear fruit from original branches. When a tree's wood ages and hardens, it can't force out new shoots with leaves, flowers, and fruit. Then it's time for pruning, or even cutting down the main tree trunk. However, the life is in the ROOTS of the tree, and the next season, as if in a resurrection, green shoots come from the extensive root system of the tree, and from all around the trunk. And from the mature new branches spring the tiny, cream-colored blossoms, and the olives that have so many medicinal, mechanical, cosmetic, and culinary uses.
Olive trees can live for thousands of years. After a few decades, though, they can't bear fruit from original branches. When a tree's wood ages and hardens, it can't force out new shoots with leaves, flowers, and fruit. Then it's time for pruning, or even cutting down the main tree trunk. However, the life is in the ROOTS of the tree, and the next season, as if in a resurrection, green shoots come from the extensive root system of the tree, and from all around the trunk. And from the mature new branches spring the tiny, cream-colored blossoms, and the olives that have so many medicinal, mechanical, cosmetic, and culinary uses.
There is a holy, God-planted, God-tended root. If the primary root of the tree is holy, there’s bound to be some holy fruit. Some of the tree’s branches were pruned and you wild olive shoots were grafted in. Yet the fact that you are now fed by that rich and holy root gives you no cause to crow over the pruned branches. Remember, you aren’t feeding the root; the root is feeding you. Romans 11:16-18 MSG
God grafted wild shoots, the Gentile believers (that’s us), into the cultivar of the Jewish faith, then bound us closely with Jesus' healing blood. The result was a new fruit entirely: the Christian faith.
Regardless of which variety of fruit we develop as a result of God’s miraculous graft, let’s remember to take our nourishment from our strong and hardy, tested and true Root, the Lord Jesus Christ. He is providing moisture and nutrients, and protecting our souls from illness and injury. Shall we make His day today? Shall we blossom and bear fruit?
