First Fruits

Its been a long and viney road over the past year as I've tried to grow passion fruit along our garage. Originally, the garage was completed last July and I decided it would be nice to have passion fruit vines to grow up the support beams. I planted 10 seedlings and watched with fear and trembling as they grew and shriveled each day in the hot sun. A few of the seedlings died, were replaced, and then their replacements died. In december, the garage collapsed due to high winds and rain which made the passion fruit ever more susceptible to the sun. I began watering them daily until we left for Nairobi in February. Throughout our time away, I hired our neighbor to water the passions and, to my surprise, when we came back in May, the vines were flourishing. In June they started to flower and fruit and now in early August the first fruits were ripe.

To commemorate God's faithfulness throughout the passion producing process, we held a small first fruits service in our home. We offered the first 3 ripe fruit to God, reading Exodus 23, Romans 8, and I Cor 15. We continue to praise God for His never-failing, always-new presence in our lives. We remember that like many things, fruit take time to grow but are sweet when cared for with patience and allowed to ripen with love.