Of Plastic Fruit and That One Thing We Know for Sure

Recently, a friend reminded me of something one of our college professors used to say,

 “Have you ever seen a tree branch sweat?”

Christ said He is the true vine, we are the branches, and apart from Him we can do nothing (see John 15).

How many of us are like a branch that works and sweats, but only produces what my friend calls “plastic fruit”?

We stick “plastic fruit” on the otherwise unproductive branches of our lives and the result is fruit that looks good from a distance, but is worse than no fruit at all.

We all have heroes of Scripture. I think the blind man who was healed by Jesus and confronted by the Pharisees is on my top ten list (John 9).

Boldly, he told only what he knew, and that truth shot arrows at the religious hypocrisy of the day.

Blind for years, but healed in a moment, he had this to say to the questions and doubts and plastic fruit of the religious leaders,

“One thing I know: that though I was blind, now I see” (John 9:25).

Putting on an outward show didn't even enter the equation for this man. Christ had done everything for him, and that's all that mattered.
 
One thing we know for sure: We were blind once, but now we see.

That’s really all we need to know.

Anything we do and any effort that that doesn’t magnify that truth is plastic fruit—a show of good, but lacking anything life-sustaining.

One thing is for sure.

Christ stepped into your life and mine when we were blind, and He gave us sight.

We didn’t receive sight out of sweat and tears.

He performed that miracle.

That alone is fruit enough to share.

Real fruit.

Only Christ can produce fruit through your life and mine.

The One who gives sight to the blind.

Who did that for us.

Who can do that for others.

The one thing we know for sure.