Death changed the course for both people and nature. Fruit-bearing ceased being a continuous cycle of fruiting, each according to its kind, forming an eternal circle within a spiral.
A broken circle became an arc with a beginning and an end. None of this Disneyfied “Circle of Life” nonsense. It’s an arc, even for the death deniers who will know mortality someday, even on Mars.
In some cases the life is long, some olive trees are more than 2000 years old. In other cases, it is short. Adult Ephemeroptera (mayflies) live only 1-2 days and focus on… you guessed it … reproduction.
Plant and harvest. Birth and death. Beginning and end. Outside of Eden, that’s all we’ve got.
How ought the fact of mortality impact the urgency of bearing fruit of some good form?
“There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens: a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot” (Ecclesiastes 3:1-2)
Moses prayed, “Our days may come to seventy years, or eighty, if our strength endures; yet the best of them are but trouble and sorrow, for they quickly pass, and we fly away…Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” (Ps. 90:10,12).
How does knowing we have a life span instruct us in wisdom? How does that square with the adage “Youth is wasted on the young?”
Is bearing fruit referring to physical reproduction only or could it also mean replicating our faith in Christ by making disciples among other people?