Are you growing leaves or bearing fruits? Find out in this blog.
I was walking with Ugochukwu, my senior cousin, in our farm because we were asked to pluck okro for the okro soup (my worst soup then and maybe now) that my mum wanted to cook and after a long search of many growing plants we found just few fruits, and one of the things that shocked me the most, and prompted the initiative of this blog, was that we found those fruits in the youngest of the plants and the big growing okra plants we thought would find more, we saw nothing. Why should this be so?
Why the Big Plants Have No Fruits:
Too much Nitrogen and growth fertilizer: The plants put all the energy into leaves that can be endearing, and height that can be attractive, not reproduction. You can have and acquire all the knowledge, but does it bear fruit? Do you apply that knowledge so it becomes intelligence? You can pray and ask God all you need, but the one he has given you, what have you done with it? He has given you all you need; your will is yours but what exploit have you done? Are you growing leaves or bearing fruits?
Not enough sunlight: Big leaves are trying to chase light. Energy goes to survival, not fruit. What do you need that money for? What do you need that grades for? What do you need that fame for? What do you need that approval for? Is it to just be in that ‘light’ or you want to make an impact? Or you have seen something that you know can be better? Or has God placed a burden in your heart that you must birth out for Him? Are you growing leaves or bearing fruits?
Someone or something plucks their fruits: Sometimes big plants don’t have fruits when needed, even though they look so much attractive, not because they don’t bear fruits but because they attract predators to pluck their fruits. Do you have clashing aims? Do you put your leg in two totally different places and still expect to stand? Can you run in two different directions? Are you growing leaves or bearing fruits?
Why the Small Plants Are Bearing Fruits:
Stress makes them reproduce: “If I might die, let me drop seeds fast”. They don’t look at how much they have to do but what they can do now. They don’t wait for the right moment to act but they create the right moment to act. For them it’s not “what I do, to have but what I have, to do. They understand what is and what is not to know what could be done and what can’t be done at that moment by them.
Less energy wasted: Small plants focus everything on a few fruits instead of “growing big”. They define growing big as how much fruits they bear and the value they create. They use all the energy they’ve got because they don’t want their master to say to them when they go to ask for more, “But you still have…”. They stress till they have no energy so they don’t even need to ask for more before they are given.
Conditions, Grace and Trait: It could also be they hit fruiting stage early by just conditions they don’t even know, or can explain logically, in an ideal case in which they get unmerited fruits. Or it could be traits from generations that have not been tampered with. They allow the master take them, and to the right direction they just go.
Life Lesson I Deduced;
Stop feeding the wrong thing: What you feed grows. Feed ‘nitrogen’, you get leaves but feed ‘phosphorus or potassium’, you get fruits. How do these plants actually know what to feed on? I’m not talking about the plants; I’m actually talking about me and you. That’s what make us different from them. Feed distraction, ego, ‘looking big’, you have big leaves. Feed discipline, service, and purpose you will bear fruit.
Comfort Kills the Fruits: Has the world really balanced to make you comfortable enough? Your comfort should be in your endeavors, your progress, your success and ability to rise from your failures, your Maker, your gifts that you see bearing good fruits. These and more related to it should be where your comfort should lie. Not in your past success or failures, not in what you are making, not in what gifts you were given.
Only the Master: It’s not just about the logic outlined here or what can or should be done, but truly what the Master decides. So, me and you, we, should all just depend on Him. For He knows what is best and what is not. So therefore, when we bear fruits or leaves, we should not just take our own wisdom, because we are humans and not plants, but run to the Master because we are humans and not plants.
We look at ourselves and ask, are we truly producing fruits or are we just growing leaves?
Credits to Meta AI to help in breaking, arranging points and organization and to my mum for sending us to pluck okro from the farm and most essentially to God Almighty, giving me the initiative and privilege to take note of this.
Written by: Chikamso Favour Chidebe.
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