Lessons in the dreaded yard. Part 7.

Oh yes, my yard. In June, we began a project to overhaul and make usable our tiny and weedy back yard.  You can see some of the other phases HERE (I'd recommend reading from the bottom up).

One thing that was very important to us is that we would make the yard a) a place we'd enjoy being and b) a garden of eatin'- meaning we'd plant mainly trees and plants that produce edible fruit or leaves. We already had a lemon tree, which gives me great joy each time I can go out and pick one to use in the kitchen.

We also had two other fruit trees... a kumquat (my husband loves them...ewww) and a dwarf apple. The problem is this... we were so shortsighted we only bought one of each. Apparently fruit trees need to be in the company of others of their same kind for cross-polination. So, the first crop from our fruit trees was the very last. That's why, when it was time to go to the nursery to get our foliage, we knew (in addition to our two new dwarf orange trees and and shade tree) we had to get a friend for our poor fruitless kumquat and apple.

(would you judge if I told you we brought in the new trees, put them next to their mates and made the trees 'say' in a very Joey Tribbiani voice, "How YOU doin'?"-- yes? well, good thing we didn't do that)

A couple of weeks ago, I was reading about the fig tree that Jesus cursed in Matthew 21. Here's what Jon Courson had to say about it in his NT Application Commentary:

Verse 19 says it was a lone fig tree. This tree bore no fruit because there was no cross-pollination. It's a matter of biology and a fact of life: A lone fig tree cannot bear fruit. 
You see, gang, when we meet together, a spiritual 'cross-pollination' takes place. There's a dynamic unlike any other when people come together corporately to praise, play, and study the Word. This only makes sense for our God is a Father who loves his family.
When my kids were all at home, I wanted them to sit around the table and eat together. We didn't serve Peter-John in his room, Jessie and Christy in their room, and Mary and Ben in their rooms because something special happened when they were all together. So, too, our Father desires that His children come together around his table, the table of Communion. Secondly, our Father calls us to come together to the table of Bible study, where the manna of the Word is opened for us to partake of its spiritual nutrition. if you are a lone fig tree, you might appear to be healthy for a while. You might have all the leaves of right theology. Others might be fooled by your outward appearance. But there will be no real fruit found on you. as 'living stones being fit together for His glory' (see 2 Peter 2:4), we need each other.

While I was sick and on vacation, I managed to miss out on four weeks of church. I can't even remember missing 4 Sundays in a row since... well, I am pretty sure I had infant twins. During those four weeks, I watched online, and we did a Bible study in our family, and I did my daily study, but I could still feel the difference. I was so happy to be finally sitting in an actual pew & praying & fellowshipping with my actual IRL church family - it felt amazing. 

If you currently are not going to church every week- for whatever reason, let me encourage you to get there this week. 

• If you don't have a church (because you moved or because you never had one or because you're unhappy with the one you used to go to or because it's hard for you emotionally or physically or you don't know anybody or whatever)... find one. 
• If you're too busy... make some time. 
• If your family won't go... go alone. 
• If you've gotten out of the habit... determine that this week, you'll get back in the habit. 

Don't let satan win- don't listen to his lie that there is anything more important, that you aren't really welcome, that it's not really essential, that reading blogs online or having fb friends is the same (they're excellent in their own way, just not the same), that you can always go next week, or that you're just not a 'church person.'

It's true... going to church doesn't make you a Christian... but satan takes that fact and twists it into thinking we're okay on our own, that we don't need to get up and go to church, and then he gets his way- we get fooled into staying away from the very place that can help us grow and bear real, true fruit. The excuses pile on top of each other to form a wall between us and the people God intends to use to help us to grow. Let that be so no longer.

Go. fellowship. no excuses. 

Be blessed, my little fruit tree friends.....

And let us not neglect our meeting together, as some people do, but encourage one another, especially now that the day of his return is drawing near.

Hebrews 10:25