Fruit That Will Last

“You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit, fruit that will last.” – John 15:16

As the first foretastes of fall approach, the coming apple harvest reminds me of all the work that went into making the good apple cider of our childhood.

Our next-door neighbors orchestrated these cider-making adventures, often with our help, to sell at their roadside stand. Throughout the year, we’d collect many of the key elements we’d need, like burlap bags and one-gallon glass jugs.

Then, in the fall, when the apples were ripe, a small army of neighborhood boys and girls would descend on a local orchard. With burlap bags in tow, we’d collect the best apples off the ground. When their station wagon was nearly scraping the pavement, we knew we had enough apples to press into one barrel.

The final stop was Fromwiller’s Mill, where those apples were transformed into freshly squeezed cider. Our reward for helping was a bottomless one-gallon jug of the best apple cider in Western New York.

Yum!

Looking back, something else strikes me about those cider-making days:

We never produced a single apple.

We gathered them. Hauled them. Pressed them. Bottled the cider. But the fruit itself had already been produced for us.

The apples were already fruit. Our job was to gather what had been given to us and put it to work.

That sounds remarkably like something Jesus told His apprentices on the night before He died.

In John 15, as Jesus and His disciples made their way toward Gethsemane, He used fruit as a metaphor to explain how they would continue what He had begun: the inauguration of the Kingdom of God and the advent of New Creation.

As we remain in Him, we are being formed as apprentices, becoming more like Jesus and learning to participate with Him in the work of New Creation.

But we must not miss something important.

A branch cannot bear fruit by itself.

Jesus is the Vine.

Our part is to remain in Him.

And what does that participation look like?

Love.

Not merely sentimental affection, but the lay-down-your-life-for-another kind of love. The deny-yourself, take-up-your-cross, follow-Jesus kind of love.

Jesus’ resurrection is the firstfruits of New Creation, God’s guarantee that what He has begun will one day be completed.

That means our choices, relationships, work, creativity, and prayers, offered in love, become part of God’s final renewal.

When heaven and earth are reunited, God will make His home with His beloved.

That’s you and me.

Nothing done in this kind of love is wasted.

Looking back, we thought the point of all that childhood work was the cider.

Maybe it was.

But perhaps we were also learning something about what it means to be made in the image of a Creator. We gathered fruit we hadn’t produced, added our labor, and turned it into something others could appreciate and enjoy.

That sounds a little like our invitation to participate in New Creation.

We offer our choices, relationships, work, creativity, and prayers in love. And somehow, in ways we cannot yet fully see, He gathers it all into something that will last.

Fruit that will last. Forever.

Nothing done in love is wasted.

Run the play.

Finding Our Place in the Story

Where might Jesus be inviting you to take the fruit He is producing in you and put it to work in love?