Celebrating Unpredictable Fruit

Celebrating Unpredictable Fruit

Where I live it’s raining acorns. They pelt the roof like the fat drops of a summer thunderstorm. They cover the driveway like marbles and crack under my feet in the yard. Burley insists on selecting one to carry back inside like an after-dinner mint each time he goes out.

Even though I sweep often, I can’t brush them to the curb fast enough to eradicate the crunchy carpet of brown. The gardening gurus say we’re having a “masting year” and that the proliferation of acorns—some five to ten times the normal amount—is unrelated to any one weather factor or soil condition and totally unpredictable.

One might think that the acorns abound because conditions are perfectly aligned for fruit making, but that’s not necessarily the case. Drought can trigger acorn overproduction just as easily as optimal rainfall. During a masting year, the trees are working extra hard, expending more energy on the creation of fruit than in lengthening or strengthening their limbs or roots.

Will next year be the same? No one knows. An unseen hand bids them to be fruitful neither because of nor in spite of their surroundings. An invisible husbandman says, “Multiply,” and they obey. By any measure, this season for me is a less-than-nurturing one. Conditions are in many ways harsh—not at all conducive to fruit bearing. Yet if I pay attention to the lessons I see illustrated in my yard and on my roof, anything could happen. My heart could reverberate with the unpredictable tuning fork of the Father and overproduce in ridiculous fruitfulness. I could have a masting year on the heels of the worst drought imaginable. It could be so. And I should not be surprised. The one who made the oaks and speaks to them has made my heart and rules it. He can multiply unpredictable fruit for no good reason—daring me to burst forth with productivity just when I feel most seedless and small.

You must go on growing in me and I will grow in you. For just as the branch cannot bear any fruit unless it shares the life of the vine, so you can produce nothing unless you go on growing in me. I am the vine itself, you are the branches. It is the man who shares my life and whose life I share who proves fruitful.

John 15:4-5, PHILLIPS