A good tree does not bear rotten fruit,
nor does a rotten tree bear good fruit.
What kind of fruits do people find when they pick from our branches? Do they find love, joy, and peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control (see Galatians 5:22-23)? Or do they rather prick their fingers on the thorns of our ambition, jealousy, anger, and discord?
Why do you call me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ but not do what I command?
We might talk a good game but the truth comes out when people begin foraging in our branches looking for nourishment. We would be happy to occasionally allot some time to package and ship such fruit as we have. But we like it less when other people start reaching into us to have their needs met. We may be called to concede more to their timing, responding when we would prefer not to respond, or to the specific fruits that they need, offering gifts that we may not see as our speciality.
I will show you what someone is like who comes to me,
listens to my words, and acts on them.
That one is like a man building a house,
who dug deeply and laid the foundation on rock;
It is when we are tested that the truth of our foundation is revealed. Did we build on Jesus's words by our actions? Or did we let them dissolve into the sands of merely listening? When the storms come with winds and flooding only the solidity of lives built by acting on the word persist. Yet on our own we could not respond consistently to him, for with man this is impossible. But Jesus taught us to believe that with God all things are possible (see Matthew 19:26). He himself promised to send the advocate to come to us (see John 14:16) and to bear fruit within us. The actions that give us a rock solid foundation are precisely those that take place when we cooperate with the Spirit in our lives. We bear good fruit when the Spirit is the source of the life within us that nourishes us. The practical implications of this are that lives built on rock are built on a foundation of prayer and time with God.
Sandcastles may indeed look lovely, and their may be something very distracting in the process of creating them. But we must set our hearts to be concerned more with things that endure. These are things which we cannot reach, create, or attain on our own, but things which the Holy Spirit can enable us to touch and to taste, and even to enter.
All this call to fidelity and faith may bring to mind times when we have not lived up to the call to obey and bear fruit. It may remind us of the times when our patience ran short, or we were jealous for the blessings we saw received by others, or we let ourselves give in to an unjust anger. We may realize that we are much more likely to stumble when other people ask or demand something of us. This may cause us to doubt ourselves, as though our fruit is mostly pretense. Yet if in the past we were challenged in this way and responded poorly that need not define us in the future. We can make us profound a change as did Paul, since it is the same Spirit in us who can empower it.
But for that reason I was mercifully treated,
so that in me, as the foremost,
Christ Jesus might display all his patience as an example
for those who would come to believe in him for everlasting life.
As we let the Holy Spirit do his work and bear his fruit in our lives one of the fruits he wants to give, to which we should be open, is that of praise, which, when received as a gift, can then be more than a mere response of words.
To the king of ages, incorruptible, invisible, the only God,
honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.
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