Has Life Fertilized You?

But he answered and said to him, ‘Sir, let it alone this year also, until I dig around it and fertilize it. And if it bears fruit, well. But if not, after that you can cut it down.’ Luke 13:8-9

Any day we face may be one where a person might feel well-fertilized by it. And I do mean fertilizer in the dung sense of the word. Things broke down, plans just didn't go well, or bad news arrived in the mail, you know the sort of day I mean. Life just seemed to really dump that fertilizer on us that day. Perhaps this parable of our Lord offers a different source for that fertilizer though. Any of us might be that little fig tree failing to produce fruit. And the owner wants to take us out, transplant us beyond the wall, and throw us onto the pile for burning. But there was this gardener in the parable too, and he wanted to give that fig tree one more chance. A year of special care and, yes, a load of fertilizer. In this parable, I see Jesus in Gethsemane praying that we not be taken out of this world but given that one more year of special care from the Gardener, one more chance to produce fruit. Of course by this parable we also see Jesus as that final chance to produce and be of value to the owner, or else!

A well-fertilized day may not seem so bad now,

Bucky