Growing good fruit from a bad tree

If the tree is bad, the fruit will be bad too.

Several pear trees grow in the orchard of the farm where I grew up. I have lots of stories about those old trees, mostly about how they’re impossible to kill and how likely it is you could kill someone with their fruit.

“Man bludgeoned to death by falling pears” is a legitimate headline. Just saying.

The thing about the hard pears off of these hard pear trees—they’re really hard and woody and fibrous. And hard. Did I mention hard? They’re like rocks.

Well, a few years ago, we noticed a new little pear tree had sprouted up in the orchard. We picked the pears from it, and they were tender and juicy and sweet.

And the only explanation we have is that the other trees are just so old and decrepit, they couldn’t produce good pears anymore. It’s not the pears’ faults. It’s the tree that’s bad.

A good tree produces good fruit, and a bad tree produces bad fruit. A good tree can’t produce bad fruit, and a bad tree can’t produce good fruit.

Matthew 7:17-18