To bear fruit
Lately, Andrew Peterson’s “The Sower’s Song” has been rumbling about in my mind, especially the opening lines:
“Oh, God, I am furrowed like the field
Torn open like the dirt.
And I know that to be healed
I must be broken first.
I am aching for the yield
that you will harvest form this hurt
As summer winds down (thank goodness), and glorious Fall fades in, I feel my whole being sighing a sigh of relief: from the summer heat, and from what has felt, personally, like a season of suffering.
We never learn things the easy way, we humans.
“For God so loved the world that he gave . . . “
Attempting to connect the love of God I read about in Scripture with the seemingly permanent limp I feel in my being has been a perennial struggle. Holding up the brokenness in one’s story alongside present loss and suffering that seems oh-so-permanent brings up all sorts of questions about how God’s ways could possibly be labeled as loving.
Peterson’s song continues,
“Abide in me
Let these branches bear your fruit
Abide in me, Lord
Let your word take root
Remove in me
the branch that bears no fruit.”
Whew. That last line, though.
“Remove in me the branch that bears no fruit.”
I remember the first time I really heard-heard that line – it was like a tactical strike that opened my understanding in a way it had never been opened. To prune is to remove dead, superfluous, and overgrown branches in order to increase growth.
It struck me what a loving thing that must be, to allow a wound to be inflicted that growth might occur.
“Abide in me,
Let these branches bear your fruit.”
Amen.