Fruitful in All Seasons

Fruitful in All Seasons

An olive tree in the Garden of Gethsemane is estimated to be approximately two thousand years old. It was potentially alive during Jesus' night of prayer in that garden. An agronomist who studied these trees said: 'The olive does not have a typical growing season. It adjusts to Mediterranean conditions, bearing fruit over a remarkably long period. It is never dramatic — it just keeps producing, year after year, through drought and rain, heat and cold.' A theologian who heard this said: 'That's Colossians 1:10. Not spectacular in any season. Bearing fruit in every good work, across every season, consistently.'

Paul's prayer for the Colossians includes the phrase 'bearing fruit in every good work' — not occasionally, not in peak seasons, but consistently across the full range of life. The fruit in view is not dramatic public achievement; it is the steady output of a life lived worthily. Alongside the fruitbearing is 'growing in the knowledge of God' — as if to say that fruitfulness and growth are simultaneous. You don't stop growing to bear fruit, and you don't bear fruit instead of growing; both happen together in the life abiding in Christ. What does consistent, unspectacular, across-all-seasons fruitfulness look like in your specific life today?