What Kind Of Fruit Are You?

So the weather outside last week, for the most part, was not very frightful. In fact temperatures in the Cove got pretty close to 80 degrees! For the first week of October, I’ll take it!

But now there can be no doubt – fall has arrived! And with it comes the changing of the colors of the leaves on the trees (which can be pretty beautiful if I do say so).

As we are steadily diving headfirst into this season, one can’t help but think about things like pumpkin patches, hoodie weather, Halloween, and pumpkin spice lattes. Actually, it’s pretty much pumpkin spice everything, am I right? Coffee, candles, air fresheners, body wash, desserts, brake fluid (I may have made a few of those up, but wouldn’t be surprised in the least if they showed up on a shelf in some store). There’s even pumpkin spice soda! I didn’t make that one up! And I’m told you can even find it somewhere in the Cove…

One thing I do enjoy is opening up a fresh pumpkin, digging out all the seeds, and roasting them to eat as a snack. Two out of my four kids love them too! I haven’t done it in a while, but now that we’re finally setting in to our new home, maybe I’ll take the time again. And because of the way my brain works, I’m now stuck on the thought of wondering if a pumpkin is a fruit or a vegetable. Or is it neither? Maybe it’s both! Wait, I don’t think that’s possible. Thank goodness for Google!

So here’s what I learned. From a botanist’s perspective, a pumpkin is a fruit, because it’s a product of the seed-bearing structure of flowering plants. Vegetables, on the other hand, are the edible portion of plants, and therefore pumpkins are typically categorized as vegetables. So wait – does that mean it really IS both a fruit and a vegetable?

Now that you know all this, don’t you feel a lot better about life? You probably didn’t even know you needed to know this information until right now. You’re welcome!

This is a good opportunity for a segue. It’ll be a good one.

There’s a selection of verses in the Bible that talks about something called the “fruit of the Spirit.” This is found in the book of Galatians. You can look it up yourself, but for the sake of this article I’ll list them out. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.

What this is basically telling us is that these are the things that people should see when they look at us. And not just one or two. All of them. In fact, they should be evident in our lives. Let me repeat that – these things should be EVIDENT. That means nobody should have to dig these fruits out of you. Nobody should have to search and interrogate you to find traces of this fruit. It should be obvious, intentional, evident.

The reason the word “fruit” is used is pretty simple. You can tell what kind of tree (or other plant) you’re dealing with by what it produces. An apple tree won’t grow oranges. You won’t find grapes hanging from a banana tree. There are no surprises. Nobody in recent history ever peeled an orange and gasped in shock when there wasn’t a pear hiding inside.

Which brings me to this question. What kind of fruit are you? Better yet, if someone were to peel back your layers, would you be sweet or sour? Ripe or rotten? Is what you show on the outside (how you act and treat people) representing who you are on the inside?

Listen, everyone has their “rotten fruit” moments, even yours truly. But we don’t have to let those moments define who we are.

And the good news is that no matter where you are in your journey of life, it’s not too late to start producing good fruit. Even if yesterday you had a bad day and produced bad fruit, make it a point to produce good, tasty fruit today!

It starts with simple choices. How can I be more loving today? How can I show someone I appreciate them today? How can I share an act of kindness today? If you keep cultivating good fruits, you’ll keep producing good fruits – and that can be contagious! I believe that we can see change in our own lives, and then we can see the lives of those around us change for the better. So what are you going to do differently? What kind of fruit are you going to be?