Looking at fruit

My brother has an extensive knowledge of trees. After working for several years at a hardwood company during high school and right after, he can identify trees in the woods just by looking at them, from their leaves and bark. It's such a cool skill to have, and something I really admire about him.

I, on the other hand, have not spent a lot of time working with or studying trees, so when I am walking through the woods, I can tell the trees are different types, but I can't put a name to them. Because I can't put a name to them, I can't know more about them. It's only if there were fruit trees all lined up together that were all producing fruit at the same time that I would be able to tell which one was an apple tree, which one was a pear tree, which one was a cherry tree. It would be obvious then, you know?

In the same way, when we're faced with a decision or are praying about something in our lives and feel like we don't know what is the good or right thing to choose, it can be helpful to look at the type of fruit whatever we're praying about bears in us. That's how we can know if it's something worthy of pursuing or not.

In Luke 6:43-44 (NAB), Jesus says it like this: "A good tree does not bear rotten fruit, nor does a rotten tree bear good fruit. For every tree is known by its own fruit. For people do not pick figs from thorn bushes, nor do they gather grapes from brambles."

When you want to know if something is a "good tree," look at what it produces in and through you.

Galatians 5:22-23 (NAB) tells us, "The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control." These are the things God wants to give us, bear in us and give to the world through us. That's why these virtues are so deeply fulfilling, desirable and attractive; to draw us toward them and to help us pursue them. If something bears these things in us and encourages us to develop these qualities deeper within ourselves so we can give them away to others, it is probably a healthy, good tree that we can continue to nourish and invest our time in.

Galatians 5:19-21 (NAB) also gives us the signs that something we're pursuing is a "rotten tree." If it produces "immorality, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, hatreds, rivalry, jealousy, outbursts of fury, acts of selfishness, dissensions, factions, occasions of envy, drinking bouts, orgies and the like," it is probably not the best that God has or wants for us. God leads us with the fruit of the Spirit; the absence of this fruit may be a sign that something is a thorn bush or bramble and not the good, life-giving tree we're hoping to find. Or that we need to ask God to transform our hearts in regards to it in a way that produces good fruit.

What a gift from God that when we don't know the name of a tree, the fruit will tell us what it is.