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?

Go Ants! Go Ants! (No, really. Go.)

Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise. Proverbs 6:6 KJV

            Ewww. I hate slugs and snails. And I’m really sick of ants, too. I remember this verse when I’m watering my trees or cutting back morning glory vines. I memorized it in church school, probably as work-ethic indoctrination!

            I grew up in Arizona, where slugs and snails were unheard of until we got bedding plants shipped from California growers. Of course, there were ants. But not in the plague proportions I see in southern California, where I live now. Ants drop on me from the trees, and they climb my ankles. They bite rarely. But I don’t want insects on me!

            After fighting ant invasions in the house, I employed an exterminator. But they don’t “do” snails, so I spend about $50 a year on snail poisons (beer and salt are not the answer). The baits kill the arthropods, but those nasty things can sleep in the soil for up to five years, so wave after wave hatch out, thus needing smushing and poisoning.

            Solomon had a point, though, comparing critters to people. Slugs can’t be bothered with industry: they are parasites that eat desirable plants and destroy seedlings. (They’re also hideous, smelly, and leave slime trails.) And ants, though not known for their IQ, can move mountains by teaming (and teeming) together. When the hose water floods the tree well where they have one of their many colonies, they mobilize the army, and carry the eggs and larvae to higher ground to prevent drowning and preserve their community. Their colonies aerate the soil, their workers pollinate my flowers and fruit, and they don’t bite (much), so I tolerate the yard ants. 

There are four small creatures,
   wisest of the wise they are—
      ants—frail as they are,
   get plenty of food in for the winter;
      marmots—vulnerable as they are,
         manage to arrange for rock-solid homes;
      locusts—leaderless insects,
         yet they strip the field like an army regiment;
      lizards—easy enough to catch,
         but they sneak past vigilant palace guards.

            Proverbs 30:25  says that ants—frail as they are, get plenty of food in for the winter and calls them the wisest of the wise, along with marmots, locusts, and lizards, because they are small, vulnerable, leaderless, and easy to catch. Ah, but they have God-given strengths that make them the best little creatures they can be!

            What are your weaknesses? Ask God how He can turn those weaknesses into strengths. He can turn it around. He loves to surprise us with blessings!

The parable of the weeds

They will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil…. Matthew 13:43 NIV

Last July, I took out some really big weeds growing behind the vegetables. These weeds were huge. Treelike. Their stems were an inch across, and woody. They topped the six-foot fence. I pulled and tugged, and perspired heavily while batting away gnats. When those roots wouldn’t loosen from the east side, I dived through the thick green pine needles to get to the west side and pull from that direction. I did finish the job, but was too late to prevent the weeds from seeding the plants that I need to pull now. The seeds were almost invisibly tiny, borne on the wind with white cottony fluff.

When I first moved here, I planted a blue morning glory vine. It was truly beautiful, but it took over the yard and climbed the fence (and grew through the wood slats), as if making for the Canadian border. It can grow a meter a day on every runner! It invaded the avocado tree, stunted the pine tree, and choked out other plants. So I tried to eradicate it. I killed the main stalks, but the runners have taken hold everywhere, coming up 30 feet away from the source. It’s a never-ending job. I can’t pour poison on the vine or pull it up without killing the desirable flowers and food-bearing plants that co-exist in the yard.

Until now! This is harvest time for the annual plants, and like Jesus’ harvesters, I let the plants and the weeds grow together, then collect the weeds to be destroyed. (Unlike Jesus’ field, my weeds will be back next year, but for now, it looks clean and orderly, and the winter sun can reach the soil and prepare it for the spring plants.)

Jesus said that weeds, symbols of the sons of the evil one, are pulled up and burned in the fire, but the good grain and fruits, representing the sons of the kingdom, are harvested by the angels. “As the weeds are pulled up and burned in the fire, so it will be at the end of the age. The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil…Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father.” Matthew 13:40-43 NIV

Even a city kid like me understands that parable! Won’t it be wonderful when Jesus comes to collect us in His grand harvest and glorifies our bodies to fit His kingdom? The promises He has made, He is faithful to fulfill.