Beauty and Fruitfulness
“God blessed them and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number.”
This was the command of God to Adam and Eve in the beginning. On the surface level, the command here was to make babies and fill the earth with humans. But in another sense, the command is so much more than this.
It is a metaphor for what it looks like to overflow into who we were made to be and who we are to become. We get the first clue to this by the way it is phrased, “be fruitful.” Fruitfulness is not something we produce, it is an overflow of who we are.
But how does this kind of fruit form? If pro-creation wasn’t the only aim of fruitfulness, then what is?
I think we can learn a great deal from studying the way creation forms fruit in the natural order.
Cherry Blossoms in Suttons Bay, MI
Flowers Before Fruit
The fruit we enjoy like cherries and apples and grapes were at one time a flower. The flower literally becomes the fruit upon germination. The beauty of the apple blossom or the cherry blossom is a sign of what is to come. And not only is it beautiful, but it is essential for the flower to unfold in order for the fruit to emerge.
Consider this for a moment: Beauty precedes the production and multiplication of fruit.
Perhaps, with the encouragement of Jesus, maybe we need to spend a little time “considering the lilies.”
Beauty Draws Us
When a flower opens in all of its beauty, it gives and receives pollen between other flowers in order to fertilize. It is out of this union between different parts that fruit begins to grow.
Like the draw of bees to flowers, we are all drawn to beauty. We can’t help but want to unfold before her and to be captured in her embrace. This longing to be held by beauty is the longing for loving union with God himself - the source behind all beauty.
Evelyn and James Whitehead put it this way in their book Fruitful Embraces,
“Enjoyment of human beauty and earthly delights enkindles in us the desire to reach the Source of these blessings...we are all drawn toward the Creator who is the beginning and end of all beauty.”
Beauty, then, becomes like a flower that opens to us to be drawn in and receive cross-pollination from God himself. But unlike the union of the male and female parts of the flower, it is the union between heaven and earth, between the eternal God within us and our limited, earthly form where we then see fruitfulness forming and overflowing in abundance in our lives. In the intersection between spirit and flesh.
Unfolding Before Beauty
Beauty only yields to fertilize when it is beheld. When it is allowed the nearness and time to allow it to sink deeply into our souls and fertilize us. When we too open ourselves up to receive it. As a flower opens itself up to receive the pollen from another flower, or the soil receives the seed.
And this requires us to open in vulnerability before her. All beauty then, when received like an open and vulnerable flower, produces fruit in us. In beholding beauty, we participate in the moment of consummation - union with God himself, who is the Beautiful.
“The longing at the heart of attraction is for union with the Beautiful”
Alighting Hope, Bette Dickinson
This is what all of creation and all our stories are pointing to - the union of heaven and earth in its fullness of a new heaven and new earth in the wake of its embrace.
As we receive His love in an intimate relationship, we mature into fruitfulness. This is what Jesus is referring to when He says in John 15:5,
“If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.”
Oneness with Christ leads to fruitfulness.
As we encounter this delight of knowing God and being known by Him - we receive communion with God in a way that yields eternal fruit. His very presence, when received like an open flower receiving pollen, fertilizes us. And we can’t help but be fruitful when we emerge from this place. It is just the nature of how germination works.
This oneness produces the fruit of the spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, and self-control. This is the kind of fruit we are called to bear in the world and emerges as a natural overflow of union with Christ.
Beauty That Expands Us
The aim of beauty then, is to expand our souls to accommodate the divine within us - to expand to acknowledge and receive what is so much greater than we can physically, emotionally, or even spiritually take in.
“To behold beauty dignifies your life; it heals you and calls you out beyond the smallness of your own self-limitation to experience new horizons. To experience beauty is to have your life enlarged”
It’s like what happens to the Grinch when he encounters beauty on Christmas morning. Even after their packages, boxes, and bags had been taken away, the Who Village was singing. Their songs were beautiful because they pointed to something much deeper with their joy and gratitude.
Something eternal that couldn’t be packaged in a box. It was then that the Grinch had his epiphany, “Maybe Christmas doesn’t come from a store...Maybe Christmas is a little bit more.”
The Grinch had an encounter with beauty. And it transformed him. His heart was too small (two sizes too small to be exact) to take in the beauty of that moment. So it expanded to take it in. And what was the result? A joy that couldn’t be contained, but needed to be shared with others. Fruitfulness.
We know this deep down, don’t we? When we behold the beauty of a sunset, or a child, or God himself, we become a little bigger inside. We allow something to enter us as we also have opened ourselves up to it - like a flower.
Beauty expands us to receive eternal gifts. And when we receive those eternal gifts and they germinate within us, we are transformed to yield the fruit we were made to bear in the next season.
But how do we position our hearts to receive beauty in a way that transforms and leads to fruitfulness? Let us take our cue again from the flowers.
Opening in Vulnerability
Consider flowers and how they open in such tender vulnerability to receive light and pollen. They are fragile, but it is in their openness that they receive and send pollen and bloom in the beauty they were made to be. Like us.
When we are flowering, we are open. We are free. When we immerse ourselves in unfolding in this way, we are beginning to tap into the eternal and time escapes us.
That is why when we start to do things that we love or when we open ourselves to beauty, we lose track of time. Because in essence, in that moment we are fully present to ourselves, creation, and God himself.
And in that presence, we are connecting with the eternal heartbeat of all things. It’s as though we have stepped through a doorway where there are unlimited resources, unlimited love, and unlimited time.
There we transcend into the infinite - wrapped in the embrace of an infinite God and we are held. When we are held there in the embrace of God’s beauty, we expand as we behold the infinite God within us.
In that space of loving union with God, we are co-creating with Him like cross-pollination and new things are being birthed. Fruitfulness that emerges naturally from this loving union.
In this place of intimacy and love, we begin to re-awaken to our truest selves and who we were meant to be. Out of God’s love, our true selves have the courage to emerge and we start to unfold like the flower - open, vulnerable, yet beautiful. This draws others to us - but more than this, it draws others to the ultimate source of this beauty. God himself. It evokes awe and wonder, even worship within others who encounter God within us.
When properly directed to God, like the flower open and directed towards the light, we cross-pollinate and share with others the wonder of who He is. They are then fertilized by His love and start to mature into a beautiful creation that produces fruit that multiplies and fills the earth.
Reflection Questions:
How is this concept of fruitfulness different from what you have understood fruitfulness to be?
How is the idea of beauty being the predecessor of fruitfulness surprising to you? How have you seen this take place in your own life?
What might it look like to slow down and allow yourself to be embraced in loving union with God through beauty?
A Prayer:
Father,
You are beautiful. Thank you that in all beauty that surrounds us is an invitation to your loving embrace. May we have the courage to vulnerability to unfold before your beauty and receive Your love in such a way that we naturally produce fruit as an overflow of loving union with you.
Amen.
