Fruitfulness

Love is a seed,

its deep-hidden dna

a blueprint carrying the hope for a harvest

of compassion and truth,

comradeship and care,

along with glorious defiant acts

of justice and grace.

Gospel-teller John,

in common with those who wrote before him,

calls his readers to emulate his hero

by joining his company of disciples.

A metaphor enthusiast of the highest order,

he writes of Jesus as a vine

into which the follower has been grafted.

The disciple is expected to be fruitful,

he assures us,

and identifies the pruning shears

as an essential means

by which that fruit is produced.

Ouch.

In another part of his story

Jesus appears as a lonely grain of wheat;

a seed that, to be made fruitful,

must be transformed so completely

and painfully, that its planting / burial

is described as death.

Returning to the subject of discipleship,

he insists that this loss of life

characterizes the process by which

his followers are to bear their own fruit.

Ouch, again.

These are, of course, mere metaphors.

and modern-day disciples have no need

to take them literally.

They are, however,

expected to take them seriously

and produce the multi-coloured fruits of love.

© Ken Rookes 2012