Harvest

Here's my latest for the local paper:

I seem to have an unfailing ability to kill whatever plants are unfortunate enough to exist in my house – even the ones that are meant to be indestructible, like spider plants and cacti. It’s not intentional, but does seem to be inevitable. Recent casualties have included a peace lily and some fresh coriander. There is a once glorious pot plant in the corner of the room. Just one of the six main branches has any leaves, and those are now withering and looking a distinctly unhealthy yellow. So I’m probably not the best person to be talking to you about Harvest.

But strange as it may seem, the withered plant is a pertinent image for us. God, we’re told, has made us to be fruitful – to live lives to his praise and glory. Yet left to our own devices we’re the spiritual equivalent of the scrawny stick poking out of the plant pot in the corner of this room.

Enter Jesus, with a typically momentous claim: ‘If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing’ (John 15:5). The way to bear the fruit which God longs to see in us is to come to Christ. Not just to acknowledge him in a respectful but arms-length manner, but to entrust ourselves to him such that we live in him and he in us. Do that, Jesus says, and we will bear much fruit – the abundant harvest for which we were made.