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Special Bulletin Article
Copyright 2010 by John B. Reynolds - john@jrwrites.com
March 7, 2010

ON FIG TREES, DEADLINES, AND HITTING THE SEND BUTTON

Other than walking beans as a summer job in college, I’ve not spent much time on a farm. In truth, I’ve always kind of regretted this because I got to know a few farmers growing up, and I could see in them the good qualities that John Denver sang about years ago in his hit, “Thank God I’m a Country Boy.” My farming friends were easy-going folks, for sure, but hard-working, too. And optimistic. Hence, regarding the barren fig tree which Jesus speaks of today, I could see my friend David telling his dad (just as the gardener in the Gospel tells the orchard-owner), “I’ll cultivate the ground around it and fertilize it; it may bear fruit in the future. If not, you can cut it down.”

In a sense, this column you’re reading - and thanks as always for reading it - is my fig tree. As I told some friends in Calumet City recently, this is my product, and I work hard on it each week before I send it out into the world. In keeping now with the fig tree analogy, I water and nurture it, always hoping it will produce fruit. Sometimes the column grows straight at first planting, but rarely. Most times, I spend several hours on it - often over the course of days - to get it right. As if I ever get it right. Usually it grows wild. Then I prune it. Sharing work with some poets not long ago, one of the writers said that her offering that night was “a work-in-progress.” I told her that every piece is.

She nodded in agreement, but as one who regularly submits work for publication, I know that this is not totally true. Deadlines negate the romantic notion that any piece of writing is always under development by the writer - in conjunction with his or her Muse - until each syllable is perfectly chosen and placed. If an editor is expecting so many words from his or her writer by such-and-such time on such-and-such date, the writer had better deliver, or he/ she won’t be writing for the given publication for very long. Writers understand this, which means that sooner or later - even if we feel our work still needs watering and nurturing - we have to hit the send button.

Well, we’re all on deadline, folks, and of an infinitely grander scope than the deadline that my editors give me each week. We have only this life to write our story. But here’s the thing: we don’t decide when to hit the send button. Death hits it for us. Sooner or later, the work-in-progress that is each of us will be submitted before our judge and savior. We can’t earn our way into Paradise, true, but we’re given enough examples throughout Scripture to know what is expected of us to really claim Jesus as Lord. Christ precedes his parable of the fig tree by recalling the eighteen people who died under the tower at Siloam: “…do you think they were more guilty than everyone else who lived in Jerusalem? By no means! But I tell you, if you do not repent, you will perish as they did!” God is merciful. Lent reminds us of this each year. It reminds, us, too, however, that sooner or later, our deadline will be upon us. May we use the time we have productively, always putting our trust in that merciful God.