Crazy Grace and Wild Belief

DAILY BYTE

The last affirmation and question found in the parable of the Fig Tree is like an explanation mark to the two that precede it. It is foundation, root, soil and manure to everything that goes before and after it. It can be summarised as follows:

Life can be unfair, but why not live with the greatest truth of all ... that God is loving and that God has a loving plan!

In a world of dissonance and disharmony, God has a plan to redeem everything, to bring it back into the beat of his harmonising salvation song. We need to trust that and live inspired by that!

What I love most about this parable, is that it tells the story of this crazy gardener who actually cared about the life of the tree. He saw the fruitless tree more as a wounded life worth healing than a wasted opportunity for profit in need of clearing.

Jesus’ parables are often defined by their shocking reversals, and if we read one of his parables and find no unexpected behaviour in its characters, then we are not reading properly!

The point is that it would be crazy for a gardener to care about a tree in that way. It would be crazy for a gardener to tell his boss ‘no’! It would be crazy for a gardener to plead for one more year, and then to volunteer for extra work in terms of digging around the tree and piling manure in.

And did you notice how he implied to his boss that even after that year, if the tree was still not fruitful, that he wasn’t going to pull it up – the boss would have to do it himself!

But isn’t that just the kind of crazy way God cares for us? Isn’t that just the crazy kind of love Jesus lived and died for?

In this parable, Jesus is telling us that God is the kind of God who insists ‘well, just one more year.’ He is the God of second chances, the God of crazy grace and wild belief that even the most hopeless and the least fruitless cases have a chance.

PRAY AS YOU GO

O God of second changes, God of crazy grace and wild belief, I thank you for never giving up on me. I ask that your hope in me would produce wonderful fruit. Amen.

FOCUS READING

Luke 13:8-9 NRSV

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.' "