Trees Bear Fruit

I am not sure who, if anyone, still reads here but I wrote something I wanted to share with you all. Please pass it on if you like. I am working off my iPhone so editing is tough, so please excuse any incompletions in word or thought.

This is a small summation of just one element of something God has been teaching me this year, and boiling out as I am on this trip. I think getting out of Gainesville has been really good for me, I love that city but oh the distractions! Here I may find myself lost in a crowd or on a train in solitude, but still I am a free agent, hearing and seeking unbound by the unseen forces one's homebase often has.

So today I am reading and meditating in a town called Rueschlikon, near Zurich, Switzerland, and I just began typing this. Now, I will share:

"Trees bear fruit"

My problem is often letting go. Investing in something, a relationship for instance, requires sewing bits of ourselves into it, and the growth and fruit becomes our reward. When we invest in something while ourselves being in the nature of Christ, a never ending source, no matter what we give we will receive and find renewal in time. Outside of the nature of Christ, investments become more about ourselves and our motives and are less renewable. Without God we are a race doomed for extinction.

Yet either investment can and often will come to an end before we are ready, and separation from the work put into the growing season can be very painful. We want to move on, find new land perhaps, knowing by rote that this is "what's best," but we also fear what, unseen, lies ahead.

Those investments with less or even none of Christ may sink, taking parts of ourselves along with them, and in this situation continuation of the journey seems bleak. How can I step when I do not know my own feet? (They aren't your feet, they are God's feet!) Yet while we ourselves remain in Him we will be renewed. The more we sew in Christ, the higher our chances of return, but that does not mean we will receive what we initially desire. I've yet to meet a human who truly knows what they want outside of eternity. (yet even then, what a man desires is unfailing love, therein lies eternity or vice versa)

Yet despite any desire to remain, it is our nature to continue and create, as we mirror our Creator. It isn't in returning that we grow, unless by some lapse of maturity we are forced to circle back to some sort of origin. But we should trust the lessons God has already taught. Nor are we to leave disaster in our wake and proceed blindly in our way, for we are at every moment a witness.

There is a narrow path in the light of Grace on which we must situate ourselves and continue, step after faithful step, no matter what we have left behind, knowing that God is greater. Maybe not always feeling it, or thinking it, but knowing and believing what is true.

Phil 3:14

We must chose our investments wisely and sew accordingly, for many people depend on our fruit. It always matters, and as such we are urged to pursue wisdom. While we cannot change the past, we also cannot allow ourselves to constantly replant every seed or fixate on what could have been done.

We cannot always know the fruit of our labor in one season. We scratch the earth waiting for mere seedlings on our own time while God wants us to continue in faith and await the trees.