Two years ago I bought a banana tree and planted it. A cute little thing. It grew bigger, and last year I got to eat and share its abundant crop. Banana trees only produce fruit once, and after that you cut down the tree. But as the trees are growing, they are also producing little baby banana trees, so by the time I cut down my first banana tree last year, I had 5 little banana trees growing. Currently, two of those have bananas on them, the first one having 91 bananas growing and the second one having about the same number. Just this morning I saw that the third banana tree is just starting to produce bananas, too! So soon I should have lots of bananas to eat and share. At last count I think that with all the new little banana trees, I now have at least 10 banana trees currently growing as well.
Besides banana trees, I have lots of other trees producing delicious fruit in my yard. There is the big mango tree that gives us lovely shade year-round and a bountiful harvest of mangos in mango season.
There is the citrus tree (somewhere between lemon and lime, I think) that gives us fruit whenever it feels like it – sometimes it goes for a year or two without giving fruit, sometimes it gives several seasons of fruit in the same year. I haven’t quite figured him out yet. But when visitors want some lemon in their morning tea, they cut out the middle man and just pick them from the tree!
Then there are the papaya trees. They just grow up whenever they want from seed, last a year or a few years, and then die. So we currently have one that is producing its third year (probably it’s last year), one that doesn’t seem to ever have fruit, and two new ones that have decided to grow but don’t have fruit yet.
I also have the guava tree. I didn’t know much about guavas, and haven’t done much at all for the tree, except to pick some guavas every once in a while. Not a bad gig!
And there is the sunsun tree. I think it’s called custard apple or soursop or something else equally unrecognizable in English. But the fruit is very yummy. A few years ago someone planted a few seeds from one I had eaten, and one of them grew into a tree. Last year we got one piece of fruit and the birds got the other piece of fruit. This year I see at least 10 fruits on the tree.
The other trees in my yard are the moringa trees. These are trees that don’t have fruit, but the leaves make a delicious sauce that is really good for you, and the seeds are also edible and help lower your blood sugar (among other things). We have two of these trees that I eat the leaves from regularly, as well as a little one that is growing up.
Why do I tell you all this? First of all, it’s just kind of fun to have so many trees that produce yummy things, free for the picking! But also, it reminds me of 1 Corinthians 3:5-8, where Paul says,
“What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe—as the Lord has assigned to each his task. I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow. So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow. The one who plants and the one who waters have one purpose, and they will each be rewarded according to their own labor.”
I have done very little to “earn” the fruit of any of these trees in my yard. God is the One Who makes them grow and bear fruit.
And in the same way, it is true that I’m here, busy about the Lord’s work, but I am reminded over and over that if there is to be any lasting fruit it will be His doing, and not mine. I do what He lays in front of me, whether it is translation (hooray!), discourse analysis, grammar study, dictionary work, an orthography guide, visiting, attending weddings and funerals, pushing an old lady in a wheelchair, connecting with pastors and other believers, helping teams far from here, or whatever else He has for me on any given day. But I know that none of that will lead to a thriving church planted among My People. It is only the Spirit of God that can lead to that. So would you pray with me that the Spirit of God would be at work among My People, and that He would raise up a people for Himself from among this people group? That as me and others plant and water, that He would make the truth of the gospel grow in people’s hearts? My prayer is often that I would see a thriving church planted among My People with my own eyes and that, in God’s grace, the little bits I am doing would somehow be deemed worthy of being part of the process that God uses for that. Thank you!
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