Sermon On The Fruit Of Life

Zig Ziglar, an American author once remarked: “The best recipe for happiness and contentment I've seen is this: dig a big hole in the garden of your thoughts and put into it all your disillusions, disappointments, regrets, worries, troubles, doubts, and fears. Cover well with the earth of fruitfulness. Water it from the well of contentment. Sow on top the seeds of hope, courage, strength, patience, and love. Then when the time for gathering comes, may your harvest be a rich and fruitful one.” 2 Peter 1:5-8 reminds us: “For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

The fruit of life is a concept which is often used metaphorically to describe the outcomes of a righteous or meaningful existence. It includes virtues and the spiritual rewards of love, joy, and peace that manifest in a person's existence through faith. The Catholic Church specifically identifies 12 fruits, including charity, modesty, and chastity. A person's "fruit of life" relates to the tangible, visible outcomes of their character, actions, words, and attitudes. It is an allegory used to represent the ultimate result of their internal life, revealing whether they are living in alignment with goodness, virtue, and, in many contexts, God. A person’s consistent behaviors, words, and attitudes serve as the true evidence of their inner, often hidden, nature.

Life is often compared to an orchard because it requires patient cultivation, nurturing, and time to bear its fruit, with results unfolding over long cycles. Like an orchard, life involves managing growth, pruning away unnecessary parts, dealing with seasons of hardship, and hopefully enjoying the harvest of one’s efforts. An orchard is an intentional plantation of trees, shrubs, or bushes maintained for food production, primarily fruit and nuts. While they are often associated with rows of fruit trees, traditional orchards are biodiversity hotspots containing a wide variety of flora and fauna. As one makes their way through it, they will find an array of choices and pickings in life that dictate the fruitfulness of its outcome. The Tree of Life first appears in Eden (Genesis 2-3), offering eternal life, but is restricted after the Fall. It reappears in Revelation 22, bearing twelve kinds of fruit monthly to heal nations. Metaphorically, Jesus explains that bearing good fruit (love, joy, peace, kindness) by abiding in Him is essential for spiritual life and eternal reward.

Galatians 5:16-26 teaches that Christians can overcome sinful desires ("the flesh") not by following legalistic rules, but by "walking in the Spirit" - submitting to the Holy Spirit's guidance and power. This produces godly character, or "fruit of the Spirit" (love, joy, peace), replacing selfish, sinful behaviors. It states: “But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another.”

A crossroads in life is a pivotal, often challenging moment requiring a significant decision that alters a future direction, career, or relationships. It is an "in-between" phase, bridging the gap of where one is going, forcing a choice between potential paths when the current one feels wrong or stagnant. Metaphorically, an orchard can simulate a crossroads - a liminal space, or threshold, where choices and decisions are made, similar to the symbolic significance of a crossroads in folklore and literature. Orchards, like crossroads, act as "thresholds" or "gateways to other worlds," often serving as spaces for reflection, change, and the intersection of different paths. The crossroads is a place of decision where one path might change forever, and an orchard, representing a "green vitality" or a "metaphor for creative escape," can be a place where one chooses a direction in life. Just as crossroads are places of magic and transformation, an orchard can represent a space for personal growth and for "cultivating greenness" of the soul, overcoming the "dryness" (aridity) of life.