Manure Matters

DAILY BYTE

Yesterday, we discussed how crazy it would be for a gardener to refuse the direct orders of his boss, and commit himself to doing extra work in an attempt to save a fruitless tree. The gardener offered to dig around the tree and fill the hole with manure.

We spoke about how this teaches 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 least fruitless cases have a chance.

Manure does not rank high in our estimation as it is both smelly and unsightly, it is refuse and garbage. However, the observant and the wise know that this apparently dead and despised waste is actually teeming with life – enzymes and microorganisms.

Manure is the stuff of resurrection!

It’s like God is saying – just one more year and I will work my love, my forgiveness, my hope into this person, into this situation, and into this world. Just a bit more! Because God IS loving and HAS a loving plan. This is the best part of this story and the larger salvation story behind it.

For ultimately, the parable of the fig tree is a story of redemption because it emphasises that even amidst great suffering and real evil (dissonance), God is bringing the universe towards justice and love, peace and wholeness – that for which it has been made and for which it aches.

That for which you and I ache.

God will bring harmony to all this dissonance and this is what we live for! So even as you allow this parable to challenge your life and ask of it hard questions, may you become more and more aware of God’s resurrection power, his love, life, grace and hope being worked into you.

And yes, may you be totally, utterly, thoroughly ‘manured’!

PRAYER

Holy God, I ask that your love, life and grace may be worked deeply into me and may this produce much fruit. I ask this in Jesus name. Amen.

FOCUS READING

Luke 13:6-9 NRSV

Then Jesus told this parable: "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.' "