Forbidden Fruits Create Many Jams

The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. Genesis 1:12 

In June, my baker’s rack is groaning under the weight of bottled fruit and jams. The freezer is also full. Each year, I peel and pit, squash, or dice the ripe fruit from my back yard. I have a tree trunk with one nectarine and three peach grafts; several varieties of apple on another tree, seedless and Concord grapes, cherries, strawberries, feijoa, mulberries, almonds, avocados, tomatoes, peppers, and herbs. God blesses me bountifully. Some years, I have so many peaches that I give away bags and bags of them!

Every evening in late June, most of my time is for peaches, preserving them in light syrup or as thick jams. A few get sliced and frozen for nonfat smoothies. Excess juice freezes for party punch.

I heard once that “forbidden fruits create many jams.” 

Do you know the difference between jam and and jelly? Jam is made from the fruit's flesh and contains fiber; jelly is made from the juice and is usually strained clear. I make jams.

Most jam recipes call for more sugar than fruit. Four cups of berries or peaches need five cups of sugar, plus pectin, to thicken and jell. All those nutritious mulberries, perfectly provided by God for our delight and nourishment (come on, He could have just given us tasteless fiber and left it at that!), He declared “good.” Now when God says it’s good, it’s good!

I don’t want to know the extra calories I add to God’s perfect, juicy fruit when I make sweet jam. I’ve made something into a forbidden fruit—to my diet—by adding a foreign substance, although I give them as gifts at Christmas. (I have recently learned to make delicious low-sugar jams.)

When you’re tempted to sample the proverbial forbidden fruit, remember that it may seem sweet or exotic at the moment, but it’s a deception. It’s sure to make you ill or fat. Pluck from the Tree of Life, and find nourishment in “every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.”

Springtime in Heaven

            Happy April to you! By now, you should be done with the agony of tax preparation and settled into a beautiful spring. My garden is blooming and fruiting, and I hope that your garden or potted-plant window is also responding to the sunshine and nutrients. I practically hop around the back yard for joy that my peach and almond trees are setting their green fruits, that the mulberries are putting on leaves and the beginnings of tiny berries. I nearly lose control when I see the microscopic buds that will become seedless grapes!

            When I see the baby fruits growing on the trees and vines, I think of Galatians 5:22-23: The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.

            Is the Master Gardener also rejoicing over the fruits that His garden is producing? Is He pointing to you proudly and joyfully, and saying, “Today my child [insert your name here] sprouted the fruits of gentleness and peace”? Is He rejoicing over you with singing?

            Rather than anthropomorphizing God, making Him into a human image, let’s imagine that as we are His children and have inherited His characteristics by both birth and adoption, that we can project our emotions back to our Creator and Father. I really can envision God becoming excited over the growth of His children’s godly characteristics.

            We see the fruits of the Spirit in each other as we corporately and individually experience spiritual growth. And we’re pretty excited about growth of another kind: growth of the family of God. Evangelism teams, supported by your contributions and God’s grace, evangelize thousands of people around the world each year. Hundreds are baptized, but untold thousands have found the love of God so compelling that they’ve given their lives unreservedly for Jesus to change. More flowers and fruits for the Gardener.

            Take a walk in the Lord’s garden. Let Him cultivate a garden of fruit in your spirit. It’s springtime in heaven, too!

Fruit Cocktail

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. Romans 11:16 

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.

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?

The first fruit

Whatever it takes, Lord, fulfill your promise and work your purpose for my life. Even if I lose my job. Or my health. Or my possessions. None of that matters without love. You formed me for that purpose: to love. You said, 

"If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you. This is to my Father's glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples. As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father's commands and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit—fruit that will last. Then the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name. This is my command: Love each other. John 15:7-17 NIV

And that's all I'm asking. For the completedness of love. That God will take delight and joy in me because I love others. Finding the job and the concerns with daily life will be resolved because when I ask in Jesus' name (which is Love) and for his glory, he will give whatever I ask, and as he said at first, whatever I wish. What I remember hearing in countless Bible classes and commentaries, sermons and seminars, is whatever I "need." [And forget asking for anything material, the teachers and pastors said. What we're supposed to ask for is the Holy Spirit and his gifts.] But Jesus is not talking about needs of food, water, shelter.

This passage is not the Great Commission, where Jesus sent his disciples into all the world to tell people who he was and what he stood for, and to love others as he loved, resulting in discipleship and enlargement of the kingdom of God. No, this was an intimate, last-will-and-testament moment before Jesus' arrest, trial, and crucifixion. Final words spoken with urgency and on the verge of tears because they were so important. Jesus communicated his most intimate thoughts with his Father, and let his disciples—now his friends—into that relationship.

Jesus said that he was the vine, and his followers are the branches which bear much fruit. But he doesn't describe the fruit in terms of works of righteousness or accomplishments. He doesn't say that keeping the Ten Commandments is fruit. His fruit is about loving one another. In Galatians 5:22, the first fruit of the Spirit is love. The trunk of the vine carries nourishment from the roots to the branches with their leaves, tendrils, and the grapes themselves. This love or fruit is not a product of our trying, but of our receiving.

It seems too simple. Just "love." Shouldn't there be more to it, involving time, money, exertion, or pain? Shouldn't we sell up, give our goods to the poor, and travel to foreign lands to preach at people? Maybe, if that is what God is unmistakeably telling you. As anyone knows who loves, those things come right along with love. Love is not just a pleasant emotion about the upholstery in your new car, or that you prefer chocolate ice cream to 100-calorie yogurts. Love can be a very rocky road, as parents of teenagers will tell you, or spouses who have weathered life's storms. Or missionaries who have been surrounded by death and disease, terrorism and peril. Love is difficult.

But in this passage, Jesus says that love is the most important concept, the most important life, that we can choose. The decision to love is the decision to be godly, because God is Love. He is the source of love. He is the sap that runs through the vine's trunk and into the branches, and fills the fruit with sweet juice. That juice is what we drink at the Communion or Eucharist service. Jesus' blood was symbolized by the juice of the grape.

So this is my prayer: that your love will flourish and that you will not only love much but well. Learn to love appropriately. You need to use your head and test your feelings so that your love is sincere and intelligent, not sentimental gush. Live a lover's life, circumspect and exemplary, a life Jesus will be proud of: bountiful in fruits from the soul, making Jesus Christ attractive to all, getting everyone involved in the glory and praise of God. Philippians 1:7-11 MSG

Oswald Chambers wrote: "The love of God is not created— it is His nature. When we receive the life of Christ through the Holy Spirit, He unites us with God so that His love is demonstrated in us. The goal of the indwelling Holy Spirit is not just to unite us with God, but to do it in such a way that we will be one with the Father in exactly the same way Jesus was."

Love is more than a feeling. It's part of our spirit, the spirit that was created in the image of God. He created us to love him and to love one another. He is the love that runs in our veins, and fills that best fruit of all with its sweet juice.

Lord, give me love. Let love fill my respiratory and circulatory systems to overflowing. Let me bear fruit.