Good or Bad Fruit?
“Yes, just as you can
identify a tree by its fruit, so you can identify people by their actions.” – Matthew 7:20
The other day I found a peach tree loaded with big,
fat peaches. I was amazed and delighted. I gathered an entire basket and
consider myself beyond blessed.
It’s not that I didn’t know the peach tree was there.
Obviously, I did. It’s been around for many years. It’s just that every year it
makes very few, very small peaches that are almost always either rotten or with
worms. Over the years we have gathered only a few that were edible.
I wasn’t expecting anything different this year. Why
would I? Can a tree that has never produced good fruit suddenly produce such a
beautiful abundance? Apparently so.
People aren’t that much different. As Jesus noted in
this parable, a good tree can’t produce bad fruit and a bad tree can’t produce
good fruit. But, and it’s a big but, sometimes we judge without really knowing
what a tree, or a person, is capable of doing.
My parents were wonderful people who didn’t think too
much of me. They loved to tell what I couldn’t do. Sometimes I lived down to
their expectations. Sometimes I forged ahead anyway. And sometimes I didn’t even
try. It was a constant battle between who I could be and who they needed me to
be.
It was never about me. Not really. It was about their
need to control me and to feel good about themselves for “helping” me. They did
help me sometimes. And I helped them too. It’s funny how that all works. Sometimes
the person you like the least becomes the person you need the most.
Lately I’ve become more observant about the people in
my life. There are those dear friends who accept me as I am. And there are
those who need to remake me to fit their needs. We all have people who fill
both those categories. And we all fill both of those descriptions for others.
We may say we accept and support someone, even though
we’re doing all we can to influence them to our way of thinking. We’ve all done
it. Maybe even laughed about it. Maybe tried to justify our actions.
And maybe our desire comes from all the right reasons.
We don’t want to see someone we care about make a mistake. But what does a
mistake look like? Obviously, excessive drinking or drug use qualifies as a
mistake. So does uncontrollable anger.
But what about when someone changes jobs and you don’t
agree with the switch? What about when someone moves and you don’t think they
should? What about when someone takes a different path and you’re certain they
should remain the same? When does their right to choose become your right to force?
We can’t fix people. We can’t turn people into who we’ve
decided they need to be. And the harder we try, the more we push them away.
Sometimes a bad tree will continue to produce bad fruit. God is the only One
who can change their hearts to do good. And sometimes a good tree will surprise
us with producing really good fruit. It’s amazing what someone can do when we
get out of the way and let them bloom.
