Day 19

“Then he told this parable: ‘A man had a fig tree growing in his vineyard, and he went to look for fruit on it but did not find any. So he said to the man who took care of the vineyard, ‘For three years now I’ve been coming to look for fruit on this fig tree and haven’t found any. Cut it down! Why should it use up the soil?”

– Luke 13:6-7

I always wondered why Jesus told this parable and then basically left it unexplained, until recently when I heard a message by T.D. Jakes regarding this fig tree. What Bishop Jakes said was that God created the earth and everything in it to operate in cycles or seasons. We all know about the cycle of precipitation and condensation that occurs on earth and we know that the clouds let down water as rain but the earth sends water back up to the clouds as vapor. Bishop Jakes points out that plants operate by a similar principle; the soil provides nutrients to the plants and in return the plants grow, bear fruit, and give back in many ways to the soil. In this verse, the fig tree represents an entity that is going against God’s cycle. Three years without fruit suggests that the tree just continually takes from the soil and never gives anything in return. Jesus was showing us that we have to identify these things in our lives and deal with them. What I have been looking at in my life since hearing this message is what are the areas, situations, or people that are sowing into me that I am not giving back to? Am I being sown into by God, family, or friends and ignoring my duty to follow God’s cycle and sow into them?

Take action:

Can you identify areas in your life that you aren’t feeding but have been feeding you?

What can you do to give attention to those areas/people?

Believing with you,

Yvonne