Fruit and Blossoms

We’ve been picking pole beans the past few weeks, along with squash, eggplant, cherry tomatoes, and peppers. Hopefully we’ll soon be harvesting various varieties of full-sized tomatoes.

As I was picking pole beans yesterday I was mindful not to disturb the blossoms adjacent to the mature fruit, something easy to do. Rough handling when picking fruit can dislodge blossoms and falling blossoms represent lost fruit.

I thought about caring for people. Just as a tower of pole beans (we use rectangular towers to grow our pole beans) contains fruit in various stages of maturation, so congregations, small groups, and Sunday schools contain people in various stages of growth. A wise gardener is aware of mature fruit, blossoms, and every stage of growth in-between. A foolish gardener only pays attention to mature fruit, by doing so he or she forfeits future fruit. The firstfruit of a plant is exactly that, the firstfruit; it is not the full harvest. Yet, how many times do we settle for immediate fruit, take what we can get, damage blossoms in the process, and then wonder why there isn’t greater result in ministry?

I need to pay attention to the blossoms, I need to pay attention to areas of the plant that have yet to blossom, I need to harvest the mature fruit (harvesting encourages growth) and I need to be aware of maturing fruit – not picking it too early and not picking it too late. A healthy tower of pole beans will have, at some point, parts of the plant in each area of growth.