Tomatoes are a fruit. So are peppers, pumpkins, cucumbers, eggplant, okra, zucchini and yes, even corn.

They are marketed as vegetables, perhaps because they aren’t pulled from trees. But coming from a tree, being sweet, or being consumed raw isn’t what makes fruit a fruit. It’s what’s inside — the seeds!

It’s the same for us.

If we could cut open the fruit in our lives, the emotions that drive our behavior, we should find Jesus at the core. Our joy, our peace, our love, our patience, our self-control, our faithfulness, our kindness, our goodness ultimately stems from Him. He is the seed around which our character grows.

We are like fruit trees in God’s kingdom.

The famous Psalm 23 is an allegory of our new lives in His kingdom, on His farm. There, under His care, we’re in a peaceful place, where our needs are met, where our souls are restored.

That’s the Christian life; one of inner peace.

Even when we “walk through the valley of the shadow of death,” even in sickness, in job loss, in the chaos of daily living, our Shepherd is with us, at our core. He grows our fruit. With Him, “surely goodness and love follow us all the days of our life.”