Lent day 11: tending

⁶Then 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. ⁷So 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?’ ⁸He replied, ‘Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. ⁹If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.’”

The hardest part of gardening with kids is explaining all the preparation you do before you can put in the seeds or the plants.  Turning over the soil.  Sifting it through the screens to get out the rocks and weeds.  Testing it.  Adding nutrients.  Getting the hole perfectly dug.  And then, finally planting.

So it is a heartbreak when nothing happens. Nothing, no fruit.  Or maybe it had some fruit, but it stopped.  With all that investment, there is no giving up.

This year, maybe it needs different nutrients, more fertilizer.  Watered more consistently.  I remember talking to the third grade teacher about the one who was struggling with multiplication.

"You don't need to multiply to pump gas," she said.  Some might give up and want to pull out the tree. God doesn't.  God keeps watering us, tending us.  God knows that there might be a season when it isn't there.  We struggle.  We know that grace when we try and we just can't.  We receive strengthening nutrients.  We are given life-giving water.  There is faith that we will produce fruit and it will be beautiful.