Blossom And Bear Fruit
Then he 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.’” Luke 13:1-9
Blossom and Bear Fruit
The young mother who stood several places ahead me in the line at the post office was clearly angry. She was on her cell phone telling everyone within earshot that she had had enough. She broke into her conversation to scold her young daughter who was counting stamps on a poster. “One. Two. Four. Six. Seven. Eleven.”
I cringed at the stinging rebuke. “Stop that. Keep your hands to yourself. You are such a bad girl.”
In the YMCA, we catch children doing something right. We are trained to look for what is going we
ll rather than focus on what is going wrong.
God is the gardener who wants to catch the tree doing something right. God is patient, kind and full of mercy. God creates the situation in which you and I blossom and bear fruit. That’s how God tends us. And it is the model for us to tend our children and each other.
Bruce Yoder is Vice President for Philanthropy at the YMCA of Greater Richmond. He can be reached at yoderb@ymcarichmond.org and on his profile page here.
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