Fruit of the Vine

How disappointing it is to work hard at something, only to have it go wrong and have no god outcome happen. Students might spend hours studying for an exam, only to discover the have studied the wrong questions. A worker puts in long overtime hours on a project, only to have the manager scuttle the project.  How disheartening this is for us, and how often it even results in our hesitating to work so hard the next time.

God is amazingly resilient despite human forces and frailties that constantly thwart the divine plan for our salvation. Nothing, not even sparing the life of the divine Son, deters God from offering us a rich heritage in divine life itself. For our part we are to be faithful tennants who rejoie in our heritage and acknowledge that we have been given far more than we expect or deserve.

What is the fruit we are to produce? The fruit of the kingdom is the life God offers but the only way to produce that fruit is to die to self. The kingdom involves our rooting out anything that keeps us from growing in relationship with God and hearing God’s word, our dying to self so that we can do God’s willl.

As faithful tenants we plant seeds of encouragement and hope, we water the growing fruit with prayer, we fertilize it with reflection on God’s word, we cultivate it by good works and we celebrate its abundance by sharing it with others.

We are heirs to more than our rightful share. We receive an inconceivable heritage, abundant life that cannot be pressed out.