The Fruit That Grew While She Wasn't Looking

In 2019, Maria Gonzalez planted a small community garden behind her church in Tucson, Arizona. She had no budget, just a patch of sun-scorched dirt and a handful of donated seeds. Neighbors watched skeptically. The soil looked dead. But Maria watered it faithfully, week after week, even when nothing seemed to be happening beneath the surface.

By the second summer, tomatoes and squash spilled over the raised beds. Families who had never spoken to each other started showing up on Saturday mornings to weed and harvest together. A retired veteran named Frank, who hadn't left his apartment in months, began tending the peppers. A single mother named Desiree found friends who watched her kids while she worked evening shifts. The garden became something Maria never planned — a place where isolated people put down roots alongside the vegetables.

Paul opens his letter to the Colossians with exactly this kind of amazement. He has heard that the gospel is "bearing fruit and growing throughout the whole world," and he marvels at it — not because of any human strategy, but because that is simply what the gospel does when it lands in receptive soil. It spreads. It connects. It produces a harvest of love that no one could have engineered.

The God who rescued us from darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of His beloved Son is still doing what He has always done — planting seeds of hope in unlikely places, then watching them bear fruit we never expected.