This photo doesn’t really illustrate the theme of this post – which is lack of fruit, when we were hoping for fruit.  But perhaps it does convey that disappointment indirectly - ie the disappointment you feel when you are looking for something, and it isn’t there.  Ie this geranium leaf would look nicer (I feel) with a bright flower beside it – but instead there is just the green of the leaf, and the drops resting on it after a shower.

The theme of these posts is poignancy and loss, and perhaps there’s no more wearing loss than the continual ‘drip, drip’ of fruitlessness.  A childless couple who never experience conception.  The promotion that never happens, or the finances that never get sorted.  Hopes dwindling and the spark of life threatening to die completely.

I won’t speak from experience about hope rising in the midst of darkness.  I don’t have a particularly powerful testimony about that happening.  But I would say that thankfulness has proved a very helpful antidote to feelings of uselessness and futility.  I picture it as like an umbrella, covering me and protecting me from the dark rain of envy, despair, bitterness and fear.  I was encouraged, yesterday, reading from Psalm 65, where it says in the Amplified version, ‘the hills gird themselves with joy’.  Often we cannot do anything to produce the fruit we desire, but we can choose to ‘gird ourselves’ with joy and thankfulness.