For Wilshire Baptist Church
“Fig!” That’s what I shouted across the backyard to LeAnn on a Saturday in early April, which made her turn with the same look she gets when I say, “Snake!” So, I said it again more slowly and with more information, “We have a fig,” and she came running to see for herself.
To understand our excitement at finding one fig on the fig tree, you need to know the tree was a cutting from LeAnn’s tree at her previous house, which was famous for producing bushels of figs that LeAnn baked with and canned as preserves for family and friends at Christmas. We made the cutting in 2011 when we married and kept it in a pot while we built our new house and planned our yard. We finally planted it in 2012, and it has grown and flourished . . . but only in producing big green leaves that could keep Adam and Eve in style forever. It has not borne fruit like its parent. Most years it has been barren, and the few years it has pushed out figs, there’s been just a few, and the squirrels and birds have gotten them before they’ve ripened. And then after several seasons of brutal winters and summers, we’re surprised the tree even survived, but it did, and on that glorious day in early April, it was showing a single, solitary fig. Perhaps this would be the breakout year.
Fast forward a few weeks to May 7: We came home from church one Sunday to notice an overnight storm had tilted an old hackberry tree onto the power lines leading to our house. A call to Garland Power & Light got a man in a bucket truck over to cut the tree and save the lines before they broke. But the unexpected wonder came just a couple of weeks after that when we discovered the fig tree was exploding with figs. There were figs everywhere – still green and just getting started – from top to bottom, on all sides and more than we could count. I might declare a miracle, but it’s actually not hard to figure out. The hackberry had been shading the fig tree during the mid-afternoon heat, but with the hackberry gone, the fig tree finally has the heat and sunshine it needs to do its thing.
Sounds like a parable of sorts. In fact, several of the gospels already have “The Parable (or Lesson) of the Fig Tree” about how the fig tree is always one of the first trees to leaf out and signal that summer (the Kingdom of God) is coming. So, I will call this one “The Parable of the Figs,” and the lesson is more personal:
Shade can be a nice place to be, especially in the intense heat of summer. But sometimes lounging in cool comfort can hold us back from our true potential and what God created us to produce. Sometimes we need some heat – some irritation, challenge, provocation – to get going on God’s true plans for us. (And, because parables often have layered meanings): Sometimes we really do just need to get out of the shade of our own existence and turn our face to the true source of life – the bright sunshine of God’s love.