Fruit of the Spirit

During our trip to Georgia I had the opportunity to walk down to my grandmother's old place. The house was in disrepair before she passed away some years ago, and time has continued to wear the old house down, yet the minute I stepped off the road into the gravel drive, memories came flooding back.
I was there for a reason; figs. For the first time since my childhood, I was visiting when the small tree in her back yard was bearing ripe fruit. I met my dad and uncle walking back up the road,dad was munching away on a handful of figs,now I travelled down the Georgia asphalt with anticipation of reliving a childhood memory. As I stepped into the yard, I couldn't help but remember the small tree in the back yard, maybe six feet tall, growing beside the old tool shed.
What greeted me was much different. Instead of a diminutive tree with a handful of ripe fruit, I gazed upon a twenty foot specimen, it's branches loaded with ripe and green fruit, some having already fallen victim to the hungry birds. I filled my stomach and then a small bowl. For a brief few moments I found myself alone with fig tree and my thoughts. I drink in my surroundings and bathed in memories. Behind me a grapevine was loaded with not yet ripe grapes. Not your typical grocery store variety, but a variety exclusive to the southeastern U.S. and Mexico, I had not tasted them in years, and would not on this trip either. Standing a little further back, beside the old garden spot, stood an apple tree. A few of the green apples showed tinges of red, I pulled one, remembering how my grandmother used to dry apple slices on old window screens in the southern sun. Despite her passing years ago, her trees and vines still bore succulent fruit and the old pecan tree had, thanks to my uncle, provided many nights of late night snacking for Jina and I this past winter.
Thankfully, those fruit trees weren't the only things she left behind. She also left behind four sons who grew up witnessing her love for Christ and her steadfast devotion to the Bible. One of those four sons is my dad. He not only witnessed her life in Christ, he followed it as well. She planted within him a seed of faith which grew through the years into a tree. God then nurtured that tree by adding a Christian woman, my mother, and that tree bore fruit. My brother, my sister, and I all came to find God's grace and salvation. My sister's two kids have professed their faith in Christ and Jina and I strive daily to raise our three little ones up as our parents raised us. So, it isn't just my grandmother's trees and vines that continue to bear fruit, her life does as well.
As I stood there picking the figs, I thought about how they were a fruit mentioned in the Bible. I thought about the passage in which Christ curses the fig tree for not bearing fruit in season. Then I asked myself, "Will my life be like that tree, or like my grandmother's?"