Grafted In

If some of the branches have been broken off, and you, though a wild olive shoot, have been grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing sap from the olive root, do not consider yourself to be superior to those other branches. If you do, consider this: You do not support the root, but the root supports you. —Romans 11:17, 18, NIV

I love apples. They are my favorite fruit, and I almost missed out on them. I once had the opportunity to spend five years in Rochester, New York, USA. When the first fall came, my sister took me to an apple orchard. Now, I grew up in the South, and we had no apple orchards there. The apples that were available to us were transported across the country from the apple-producing states. I found them to be soft and sometimes on the sour side. I never developed a taste for those apples. But on that crisp fall day, standing in an orchard full of apples, I pulled one from a tree and took my first bite of absolute deliciousness.

Oh! What wonderful flavors I discovered that fall.

I was hooked. When an apple is fresh, it is crunchy and juicy, not at all like the apples I had been eating from those bagged varieties in the grocery stores.

It was during these wonderful apple-picking seasons that I began to study apples. I learned apple seeds do not grow the same wonderful apples as the parent trees, but instead they become a hybrid apple. In fact, they need to be cross-pollinated, and grafting is the process that ensures the desired characteristics are maintained in the new apples.* Come on now. Talk about nature shouting the goodness of God! Adam was made in God’s image, and yet, as we have grown our families in this sinful world, our fruit has become a hybrid of all kinds of things that no longer represent our Creator. Selfishness, greed, unkindness, and dishonesty are a few of the traits found in mankind that come from the enemy and not the Creator.

This means we must be grafted into Jesus in order to bear the fruits that are pleasing to Him and come of the Holy Spirit. God takes the unpleasant, sour parts of our natures and transforms them into a fresh sweetness that only He can give.

This is not anything for us to brag about.

We are not bringing anything to the graft. It is the parent stock that gives us everything. Like the olives in Romans 11. Like freshly picked apples.

Faye Wadlington

* “Why Do We Graft?,” accessed Oct. 30, 2023, https://www.colorado.edu/cumuseum/sites/default/files/attached-files/why_do_we_graft.pdf.