The Importance of Bearing Fruit in Life
It is true that every fruit free that does not bear fruit should be cut down, but expecting fruits from a fig tree when it was not the season for figs is not fair. God Himself is the author of seasons.
Surely, Jesus knows well the laws of cause and effect. Why, then, did Jesus curse the tree for failing to deliver on what is clearly out-of-season expectation? Did he act irrationally as a result of hunger? Was he not the one who withstood Satan's temptation to turn stones into bread after a forty days and nights fast?
'In the morning, as he was returning to the city, he was hungry. And seeing a fig tree by the wayside he went to it, and found nothing on it but leaves only. And he said to it, "May no fruit ever come from you again!" And the fig tree withered at once.' (Matt 21 : 18, 19)
A case has been made that he was driving home the point that we needed to be prepared to account for what we are given without notice. But, does this hold true even when the work is in progress?
However, what happened to the tree is instructive. Jesus did not say exactly that the fig tree should die. He said,
" May no fruit ever come from you again!" (Matt 21:19)
I think it translates that for it to never bear fruit again means death. To live, therefore, is to bear fruit, and to not bear fruit is to die.
Because of Jesus' curse of barrenness, the tree ceased to be in the basic condition to live, which fruit bearing condition. God said He will bless whom He chooses and curse whom He will, so we may not fault Jesus' action.
But we have seen that when one loses the capacity to bear fruit, one withers and dies. Really, it doesn't need saying any more that we need to bear fruit to continue living.
You say, 'what if we can't bear fruit?' We can, because we are alive, so the seed is in us. We would be dead already if we could not bear fruit.
Now, to the aspect of this incident which the church belabours. Faith to do anything.
'When the disciples saw it they marvelled, saying, "How did the fig tree wither at once?" And Jesus answered them, "Truely, I say to you, if you have faith and never doubt, you will not only do what has been done to the fig tree, but even if you say to this mountain, ' Be taken up and cast into the sea,' it will be done. And whatever you ask in prayer you will receive, if you have faith."(Matt 21: 20-22)
It is becoming clearer now. With the argument given above still holding true, I say that the fig tree was sacrificed for the underlying reason of Jesus wanting to demonstrate to us how we can accomplish obviously impossible things by having faith.
And why the tree? It was just a tree. Who knows, it probably just grew randomly. No one likely owned it. Even then, he was Jesus. I suppose he could do anything he wanted :
he took an ass and a colt, which we are not told was returned to the owners; he cast out demons and sent them into a herd of pigs and they drowned with no record of a compensation made to the owners even as it is a forbidden animal, so who is to speak for this tree in a public place?
Faith, never the less, has indeed proven to work wonders. It is not a respecter of persons. Whether it is Jesus, or you and I, faith will empower us to do things beyond ourselves if we would step on it.
My wife used to have a friend. I never saw her and didn't know her name. And frankly, it's now too late to care what her name was for the sake of the people who knew her. She died the week-ended 10th March, 2013.
At a time, I was concerned about my wife's seeming attachment to this woman. She ran a store in their personal home in our neighborhood in Lagos, and my wife wouldn't buy any school snacks for our children except from her store. Being superstitious minded from my life experiences, I felt strange about that and cautioned my wife to desist from buying things for our children solely from there. But now, too late, I find out it's women talk that bonded them.
Unfortunately, my wife did not process the information she got from her now- late friend the way I would have; and so did nothing with it - not even tell me until now that it's too late.
My wife's friend was from an eastern Nigerian state. She was born in 1980, a twin. She was immediately taken for a wife by her husband as she was graduating from secondary/high school. She had four children for her husband, the first of which is already in a secondary school.
According to my wife, her friend had recently removed two pregnancies because she did not want to face people talking about her that she was 'breeding like a rat'! A woman who is in her husband's home? Where many others are dieing to give birth to a child?
The husband of my wife's friend runs a chain of pharmacy stores. He built the house they live in, and they keep tenants too. This is to say that he makes enough to maintain even six children!
Then she decided to use this family planning method whereby they insert something into the woman's mid area ( diaphram or something). The birth control method was applied wrongly and she kept going to various hospitals where they further mismanaged the complication. My wife said she recommended she went to Lagos University Teaching Hospital, but she said her husband would not let her.
My wife was told on the way by someone who lives in her late friend's house that she had passed on. She called her mobile phone, but she could tell it was her husband that switched it off when it rang! She went to her home but the woman's children, the only ones at home, had only been told that their mummy had gone to an hospital from which she would return soon! They were not told the name of the hospital. My wife ran into one of her friend's children in front of the school a day after who said they'd been told the hospital but had forgotten.
My wife recalled that her late friend once told her that a bit into her marriage a relation of her husband told her what was supposed to be a secret : her husband had previously married a woman who bore him a child. She too died. The husband never mentioned it to her before they became man and wife. She said that the relation who told her the secret died shortly afterwards! The child of the first woman was later brought into her home and she was mother to him until her passing. One needed to be told to know that the child was not hers biologically!
And so a young woman dies unto an husband that from all indication could have saved her life, but didn't. She died trying to keep herself from giving life. What a twist! What a life of confused dissatisfaction we live today! We don't want what we have, but we want what we don't have.
I feel partly responsible for her death because, if my wife had felt comfortable to talk about her friend's issues with me, I might have advised her what to counsel her friend. Then her children would not have lost their mother, nor her fostered child a second mum!
As for the husband, I think that a man who can keep himself alive while wives die on him begs inquiry! May it not be a situation of making meat of wives. It's hard to get myself to feel sorry for such a person in the light of the above points raised.
In our lawless society where people get away with gross abuse and injustice because no one stays on issues long enough to demand transparent answers, nothing can be put past people any more.
I wish you rest in peace, late friend of my wife, but not until you avenge your death against conspirators, if any!
