When Your Family Looks Like An Apple Tree

From the moment I spotted it among the various kinds of fruit trees at the most reputable Plant Farm around, it enraptured me.

I am not sure what it was? Maybe because the apples it promised to bare were actually four different colors, makes, and kinds.

And that concept blew my mind. That one trunk could reap four different types of produce…

And how, although the trunk looks solid, each branch that stemmed from it was unique, one of a kind, original.

There were green apples and red.

Branches of different types and textures all connected to one main trunk.

I bought it for Father’s Day for my husband to plant in our open field, hoping one day for a harvest.

I had to experience for myself this phenomena that branches grafted in could actually produce and look different while still connected to one, same common life source.

I sit on the couch with my husband years later. I read, one passage, he reads another.

My verse randomly chosen seems so out of context to this culture of everyone pursuing their own agenda at the expense of one another…

“Let no one seek his own good, and advantage, and profit…but rather each one of the other [let him seek the welfare of his neighbor].” 1 Cor 10:24

And in a culture where we think if we don’t defend ourselves or someone else, God will fail us.

In a country that prides itself to get ahead and ambitiously rail over one another to frantically meet some agenda…

The Bible shares how we aren’t meant to even think of our own welfare, but like Christ, we are called to give our lives as a ransom for the sole benefit of others.

And I turn my mind to that apple tree now planted outside our window.

One winter, a storm hit.

One of the branches ripped straight off and was found the next morning, lifeless on the ground.

It still had apples, but I knew then, they would never come to full fruition because they didn’t remain fastened to the trunk.

The storms came and the winds ripped it from it’s spot there where it was grafted in long ago.

And oh how we too can grow, and prosper, thriving when placed in soft soil, and nurtured fully…

But when the storms come, will we cling to the trunk, trust the roots are planted in Our Firm Foundation…or grow weak and turn to our own ways instead?

I read further…

1 Cor 10:33 “Just as I myself strive to please [to accomodate myself to the opinions, desires, and interests of others, adaption myself to] all men in everything I do, not aiming at or considering my own profit and advantage, but that of the many in order that they may be saved.”

There it was again, “Not aiming or considering my own profit or advantage.”

And it’s clear, our lives aren’t about us being the center, but our purpose is to give solely for His purpose of redeeming people, bringing others to Him…

Making Him famous.

A branch not connected to Him will always eventually be fruitless.

And you can tell a lot about the health of a tree by the quality of its fruit.

I hear my husband read his randomly chosen passage…

“If some of the branches have been broken off, and you, though a wild olive shoot, have been grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing sap from the olive root.” Romans 11:7

And like my daughter that was not ours at birth, God took her, grafted her in and made her part of our family.

And we are not any different; chosen, loved, grafted in by God to His family of origin.

Scripture teaches, families are not just made out of legal documents and contracts, or even birth names, or blood relationships…

Family is made from chosen devotion, difficult commitment, honoring the job of bringing life and health to the branches, He has connected us with.

And despite all the storms, true family never fades or disintegrates…Despite time and space, distance and even the most difficult circumstances.

And yet, we live in a world that claims titles of exclusivity? Thinking “real” trees can only produce fruit that looks and thinks like them?

Yet, a spouse isn’t blood, is it? We weren’t born with them, or given a connection at birth, generationally…

Yet, no one can doubt the bond between two married people.

Two branches of different kinds, colors, pasts, histories, grafted to one another.

How much more then are God-given relationships and families built by Him?

And yet, some say religion is exclusive, blood relationships are limited, even whole groups of people are isolated and unaccepting of one another…

When Jesus died to take the least of these, the most forgotten and disengaged…

Grafting them in, not because they are perfect, but because He is the one who is inclusive and accepting, welcoming, and embracing…

Because Jesus knew families aren’t made of up of just Jews, or people who looked like Him…

Families are like my apple tree, grafted in by His choosing…

Not by what some narrow thinking teaches, claiming family is just blood.

There is so much fruit blooming this season on that grafted in apple tree.

It speaks volumes and teaches much…

Oh that our society might follow.

We were made to be grafted into the vine, rooted in soft soil. We were made to look like the full array, display, and splendor of heaven.

Heaven was never made, to look like us.