Beauty 365 … Stories of Love and Life for Everyday

A boastful text from a dear friend on day 20 (yes, you were bragging Jess!), has inspired me to write about figs. Her message innocently contained a photo of a small fig tree bearing three baby figs, and the text, “Look, our fig tree is really taking off now!” Ouch!

Please indulge me by listening to my back-story.

Roughly two years ago, my lovely brother-in-law presented me with a stick. It was a stick from the fig tree of a colleague of his, who had assured him, “Plant this stick and it will grow into the best fig-bearing fig tree you have ever seen!” I enthusiastically accepted the stick, placed it lovingly into the ground, watered it, talked to it, sang to it, and daily inspected it for about a year! I convinced myself that I could actually see tiny buds forming, and that it wouldn’t be long before I could lie under the shade of its branches. One sad day, the scales fell from my eyes, and I realized, no, the stick wasn’t turning into a fig tree, and in fact, it was looking even more ‘stickish’ than when I first planted it.

 I called the family out to the garden, and yanked the stick from the earth, still pathetically hoping for at least some resistance from the clinging roots that it should have grown, but nothing! Nothing at all!! The family gave condolences as I ranted and raved about the injustice, and ducked as I blindly hurled the stick into oblivion.

Fast forward to two weeks ago. I’m sitting in my car finishing a phone call, when I notice that our camellia tree has some very strange leaves sprouting underneath.  A really close inspection reveals that a little fig tree is growing, not from the soil, but from the mortar between two bluestone bricks of our garden bed wall.

In truth, I don’t know if there is any connection between the stick that I hurled, and this new lovely triumphant fig tree, or not. But this Holy Week, what I am learning is this: sometimes things seem dark, sometimes things seem hopeless, sometimes things seem impossible, but life has a way of prevailing against all odds. Truth, beauty and goodness, always win.  As I journey toward Easter, I confidently await His resurrection and anticipate other miracles in my life too.

And don’t worry, you’ll all hear about it when we have the miracle of our first fig. (Especially you, Jess!)