Savoring the Word 10 - Luke 13:1-9 - Patience
Today was a day that I just needed a bit of fresh air. I didn't have any lunch appointments today so I just went for a quick walk over the lunch hour on a stunningly beautiful March afternoon. As I walked and prayed, I was struck by the blooms that are all over the place (albeit a lot earlier than they should be given that its only March 8). As I walked, I was praying about the reasons I needed to be outside today but also the challenging passage from Luke 13 where we hear words about perishing, repenting, and then another story about a fig tree. In that latter section, we read,
"A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it and found none. So he said to the gardener, ‘See here! For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none. Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?’ He replied, ‘Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.’ ”
These are not easy words to take in or try to interpret. But what I heard as I walked and prayed was a recognition that we don't always know how things will turn out but that we need to have patience and see what might emerge and what might bloom. So, I took some pictures that were intentionally out of focus of the flowers in bloom - you can get a sense of what they look like but its not clear.
That's how I feel about so much of life - we know what it could look like, what we want it to look like, even what we think God might want it to look like, but when we look at things in our lives and in larger things beyond just ourselves, we know its not there yet. But keep looking...