Faithful Paradox

We planted a peach tree at the back of our yard years ago. I bought it at the end of the growing season one year. It was a tiny stick in a pot of dirt; maybe 6 inches tall with a couple of measly shoots (even sadder than Charlie Brown’s Christmas tree). I knew its chances of survival were slim, but figured I would risk the discounted $10 that it cost and see if we could nurture it enough to bring it to flourishing and producing fruit.

Year after year, we have tended to it… sort of. We water it… when we remember. We’ve thought of pruning it… which to date has only ever been a stray soccer ball hitting it and breaking off branches or a dog pulling at its limbs and ripping off leaves. We’ve known we need to fertilize it… Maybe my idea of “nurturing it” was a bit optimistic.

I had dreams of walking to my back yard in the late summer heat and plucking a juicy peach off its branches. To date, however, the tree has never produced a single piece of fruit. Maybe it’s that it has not been properly pollinated? Or maybe it’s that fruit trees need companion trees nearby in order to flourish and it has no companion tree? Or maybe it’s our rather laissez-faire pruning methods? Maybe it’s that it has not been fertilized or maybe it’s that most springs, we tend to get a hard freeze after the tree has blossomed and I have never gone out to wrap the tree in a tarp, inevitably allowing the freeze to kill all the tender flowers that have bloomed. Whatever the reason, we have not yet picked a piece of fruit from the tree.

In my impatience, I have felt disappointed and frustrated that this tree is not bearing fruit. But as I consider it, despite the fact that it has not yet provided fruit, the tree itself has dramatically changed as it has grown and endured.

What I am realizing is that as I look for this tree to bear fruit, because it’s not bearing the fruit that I was hoping, I have missed how the tree has changed and grown. While it is true that it has not yet produced peaches, it has still been transformed.

It is no longer the six inch stubby little branch with a couple of shoots coming off of it in a dirt filled bucket. Rather, it is an 8 foot tall tree full of leaves. Every year its root system has grown deeper and deeper. Every year its trunk has become sturdier. Every year it produces flowers anticipating fruit. Every year its leaves fill out more and more full. Year after year now, there are birds that have nested in its branches. This tree has changed a lot, despite its lack of fruit.

Simply because it has not yet produced peaches, does not mean that it is not growing, changing, and becoming stronger and more deeply rooted. As I consider this tree, I think it is rather similar to growing spiritual fruit. I often have this hope or expectation of what the fruit in my life will look like. I want fruit to look like something very particular; sadness being gone, anxiety that ceases, fear that is no more. I want fruit to be the absence of impatience and the presence of continual kindness and hope. I want fruit to be perfect faith and trust in God and when I don’t experience this fruit in the way I am hoping, it’s easy for me to forget that as I grow, as I endure, my roots are also growing deeper and my trunk is also gaining strength. As I grow and mature, I am learning what it is to patiently endure.

The fruit of sanctification, maturing, and healing takes time to grow. It’s easy to believe that because we don’t see the fruit that we are hoping, change is not happening. But I am reminded as I look at this tree in my yard that spiritual fruit, just like the fruit on the tree in my yard, takes time to grow. Beyond that, fruit is not the only evidence of growth; it is one piece in the process of change.