Bearing Fruit on Barren Ground

In Kenya, a drought used to occur every five years or so. Recently, it has quickened to roughly every two years. How can you bear fruit on barren ground? Clean Leap is an NGO that helps struggling farmers in Africa and Asia find solutions. They have introduced the Melia volkensii tree. It’s “fruit” is really it’s wood, akin to mahogany, and it allows grasses to grow in it’s shade, which is an added benefit. The point? Yes, one can bear fruit on barren ground.

We have endured a year of pandemic and a spate of unsettling medical diagnoses as a local church. We have had to restrict our schedules and our ministries. We have lost skilled and helpful leaders. And it would make sense to think that this is not a season for fruit-bearing - not in a botanical sense, but in a spiritual and ministry sense.

The truth is that most valuable and necessary spiritual fruit actually grows not out of prosperity, but out of adversity. And God knows the fruit that He desires, and what is called for at any particular point in time. God designs/allows the situations in which that fruit can be forged by the testing and improvement of our faith (the Bible often mixes metaphors, such as farming and foundry work).

The most valuable and necessary fruit is often the most basic. In prosperity, Christians have less urgency to pray. In good health, we tend to take things for granted. When the church is full, we can often value each individual less. These things are not right, but they are common. God changes the lay of the land in order to address these things. This is not be wasted time for fruit-bearing.

Our Adult Sunday school class used a book a summer or so ago, called Evangelism as Exiles, by Elliot Clark. Here is a quote that I saved from that book:

“If we continue the pattern of waiting for perfect opportunities, they may never come. And our fate will be that of the wary farmer who observes the wind and doesn’t sow, who considers the clouds and never reaps (Eccles. 11:4). Such farmers have empty barns in winter. We too, if we’re too busy trying to discern the times, raising a moistened finger to the wind to see if someone is ready to respond to the gospel, will likely never see a harvest of souls. We’ll never open our mouths to speak, because we’ll be waiting for a better day. But better days don’t seem to be on the horizon.”