The Perfect Plant

Seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to find out if it had any fruit. When he reached it, he found nothing but leaves, because it was not the season for figs. Then he said to the tree, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again.” And his disciples heard him say it. —Mark 11:13, 14, NIV

Do you have a garden? I have attempted to grow tomatoes and peppers in my backyard. It is a bit of an adventure. One year I had plants that grew lovely tomatoes and peppers. However, just before harvest, something (a squirrel or chipmunk, I suspect) came and enjoyed my produce. But they did not just take a tomato and eat it. They took one bite out of each tomato and each pepper and left the rest of the fruit on the vine to rot.

A maddening scenario. The next year I acquired a pepper plant. This time I decided to keep it safely indoors. It grew tall, with beautiful leaves.

It was a lovely plant. But no fruit. I even kept it over the winter, and it grew into a beautiful, lush plant with shiny leaves. The second year it produced one very tiny pepper. It did not even look like much of a pepper, just a small green ball. And I wondered, Though the plant itself fared so well in the house, why did it produce virtually no fruit? Isn’t the purpose of a pepper plant to produce fruit? Not just look pretty? So I put it outside where there was a possibility for squirrels and chipmunks to pilfer the fruit before it was harvested.

That year it produced peppers. I watched it carefully and tried to keep the enemies of my harvest away, and I came away with an actual crop of peppers! The plant had finally fulfilled its purpose, albeit looking a bit worse for the wear. Gardening is not easy.

Living in the environment where we produce fruit is not easy. But when we isolate ourselves, we do not produce the fruit God meant for us to bear.

We become like the fig tree—beautiful but with no fruit—and our potential is unfulfilled. If we are not out in the adventuresome world where we are designed to be, we cannot generate the fruit God has prepared to produce through us.

Neither can we gather the fruit God has sent us to harvest. Just as fishermen catch fish, Jesus called His disciples to catch people. And just as we harvest fruits and veggies, Jesus calls us outside our comfort zones to find people ready for harvest—people who are ready to commit their lives to God. Sometimes, we even find them in our own backyard.

Annette M. Barnes