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Continue ShoppingWhat Does It Mean To "Bear Fruit"?
I wore this shirt out to a grocery store years ago and the cashier didn’t just do a double take… or a triple take… this dude did a full on quadruple take as he rang up my items. He looked at me, looked back at the shirt, and asked:
“Bear… fruit?”
“Like in the Bible,” I told him. “Jesus wants us to bear fruit. Patience, kindness, that sort of thing.”
“Ohhhhhh,” he said as it clicked in his head. “Bear. Fruit. Bear fruit. I get it. I’ve never seen a shirt like that.”
“Yeah, it’s a good reminder throughout my day too,” I said as I loaded the last bag into my cart. “Traffic, long lines, angry customers at work… it can be hard to be patient and kind and bear fruit and stuff. But I’m working on it.”
A few weeks later I was in the same grocery store and the same cashier was ringing me up. I’m the kind of guy who remembers faces well but I didn’t expect him to remember me. But sure enough he saw me and said…
“Hey, man! You still bearing fruit?”
“Haha… yeah, man. You?”
“I’m doing alright with kindness so far. Not so much with patience.”
He meant it as a joke. (And it was a good joke!) But I took the opportunity.
“Mind if I pray for you real quick? What’s your name?”
He looked behind me and saw no one else in his lane.
“Daniel. And… sure.”
So I prayed a quick prayer for Daniel and asked Jesus to help him bear fruit at work, at home, and even in traffic. As I opened my eyes, I was afraid he would be distracted or think it was weird that a stranger was praying for him… but he just smiled and thanked me.
Ever since then, I’ve seen Daniel almost every time I go to that grocery store and he always greets me the same way:
“Hey, man! You still bearing fruit?”
It never fails to make me smile.
We’ve got all sorts of never boring, never cheesy, never awkward, never lame apparel… And everything in our store is designed to get you into conversations about Jesus!