My Own Backyard

My Own Backyard

Last spring, I discovered figs on a tree whose distinctive trifoliate leaves I should have easily recognized but did not. In late summer, tiny green and red peppers grew on a bush I had assumed was merely ornamental. And not long ago I discovered another fruitful serendipity: two yellow lemons, ripe and ready to pick, on another small (and previously unremarkable) tree.

I planted none of these trees or shrubs; they simply came with the house. Honestly, I didn’t pay much attention to them. But quietly, without my examination or intervention, things in my yard began to grow. They exist because someone else thought of them. They are mine because I have taken up residence in the place where they were planted. My own backyard, it seems, is full of surprises.

Sometimes I discover other things I have not planted or cultivated. Rich, desirable fruits like goodness, kindness, gentleness, joy, patience, and love. That these things exist does not surprise me—anymore than I’m surprised that lemons or figs grow on their appointed trees. The amazing thing is that such things exist in me—because I did not put them there. My heart is hospitable soil for this kind of fruit only because it’s been turned and tilled by the mighty love of Christ.

I can do nothing either to sow or to nurture this uncharacteristic crop, save to be receptive to its Sower. It is the Spirit’s presence that makes these sweet fruits grow, and Christ’s love that whets my appetite for them. “We were dead to God. We were unresponsive; we had no true spiritual interest; we had no taste for the beauties of Christ. . . . He made us alive. He sovereignly awakened us to see the glory of Christ (2 Corinthians 4:4). The spiritual senses that were dead miraculously came to life.”^a

Because he did these things, and only because he did, I can relish transplanted beauty in bloom, right in my own backyard.

We have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God.

1 Corinthians 2:12, ESV

^a John Piper, Future Grace: The Purifying Power of the Promises of God, rev. ed. (Colorado Springs: Multnomah, 2012), 79.