I am looking out my window at our fig tree which is leafing out after winter dormancy.  The new leaves are light green.  Later in the year they will be darker and shiny, but now they gather in the afternoon sun and glow.  The tree is also beginning to produce its figs.  They don’t glow.  They are solid and upright.  Each fig will stay upright for a few weeks and then it will begin to droop and then hang.  That means that it is ripe and I will have a day or less to pick it before the birds get it.

Ripe fruit is the end product of flowering plants.  They produce roots and stems and leaves, and more roots and more stems and more leaves.  And then they produce flowers and fruit.  When we bought our first house I went wild planting fruit trees and vines; six kinds of citrus, seven varieties of grapes, seven stone fruits, three apples, kiwis, a persimmon and a fig.  I planted them and watered them and fertilized them and pruned them … and I waited.  After a few years we got a taste of the fruit.  After a few more years we harvested more fruit than we knew what to do with.

There is some wisdom in the common saying, “pick the low-hanging fruit first.”  Tackle a project which has a high probability of succeeding quickly and then you will have enough positive energy to tackle projects which are more difficult and time-consuming.

But the spiritual life is not about picking fruit.  It is about growing fruit.  So it is about slow and not low.  When the apostle Paul talks about the fruit of the spirit—love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control—he is not talking about fruit which has grown and ripened outside of us which we can now pick and enjoy.  He is talking about fruit which the spirit has grown within us, slowly and persistently; no one becomes patient quickly.  (Galatians 5:22-23)

And spiritual work is about growing fruit and not picking fruit.  When Jesus said, “You did not choose me but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide,” (John 15:16) he is talking about growing a tree which produces fruit year after year.  At its heart our work is not about getting conversions but about making disciples.

We are not pluckers; we are growers.  We ourselves grow by the work of God’s spirit within us, and we help others grow as we work to make disciples.  And all of this growth, as all growth, is the work of God’s grace.  To quote Wendell Berry:

Harvest will fill the barn; for that
The hand must ache, the face sweat.
And yet no leaf or grain is filled
By work of ours; the field is tilled
And left to grace.  That we may reap,
Great work is done while we’re asleep.  (Read full poem)