Continual Harvest

Over the weekend as I was reading from Colossians 2:7 from my favorite God’s Word translation, I immediately pictured my rapidly growing zucchini plants out on the deck.  This verse encourages us to “Sink your roots in him and build on him…”  It was the thought of our roots sinking deep into the Him as the very foundation and support of our lives that drew the comparison to the zucchini.  From a tiny seed these extraordinary summer vegetable plants will grow and expand out into tall, large leaved specimens that will produce a multitude of squash throughout the warm growing season.

I was amazed last summer as our two bushes each maxed out to a size that was easily three times as large as the containers that I had planted them in.  My daily diligence paid off as I regularly watered, fertilized and tilled the soil in which their roots luxuriated in!  At the height of the season each bush had multiple courgette sprouting from it’s branches.  In fact, the plants were so big that I didn’t notice one particular fruit hidden at the back of one of the bushes under its large leaves until it reached a size of about 15 inches long and around 3 inches wide!

My wonderment was focused on how that overgrown plant in what by then seemed to be a tiny planter was able to support such a large fruit without sagging, falling over or breaking its tubular branches.  Those two bushes kept producing fruit way into September.  In fact, at one point I had to give some of the harvest away as their production overwhelmed our ability to consume all those luscious vegetables! 

One of the many positive attributes of a continuous flow of fruit is that you become very creative in ways to cook it!  Let’s see, we had steamed zucchini, dipped in batter and fried zucchini, baked zucchini, stewed zucchini with onions in a tomato sauce, zucchini muffins, raw zucchini shredded in salads, baked stuffed zucchini and a few other variations of the delicious summer squash.  Did I ever mention that we liked this vegetable so much that we had a zucchini wedding cake!

I think that this is a very descriptive picture of how fruitful our lives can be when we sink our roots into Christ and the truth of His word.  The biggest difference being that His soil is not confined to the size of any particular container.  He is like the vast, good soil that is abundant in the central valley of California.  As a plant that is continually extending its roots into His soil, our spiritual growth and understanding can be unlimited as the growing season is not restricted to a certain time period of the year.  It is always the growing season in God’s fields!  The harvest can be produced 24/7, 365 days a year if we so desire and are diligent to tend to our roots.

Well, that’s the way I want to be and grow and I am sure that you do too!  So keep that vision of large delicious fruit before your eyes and continually sink your roots further and deeper into His fertile soil.  Then you too will see a regularity of harvest of the fruit of His Word in and through your lives!  Have a great day.  Stay in tune to His Word, and keep asking yourself… “What FRUIT am I expecting TO HARVEST today?”