Ah the joys and the perils of home ownership. Those of you who own your own home know of what I speak. The comfort of somewhere to come back to at the end of a long day or a long trip. The familiarity of the neighborhood and the relationships with neighbors. The pride of a new garden or flower bed.
But there is also the other side of the coin. The driveway that needs to be patched or resurfaced. The hail damage to the siding. Rusted chimney caps. Sump pumps not removing rain water from the basement. Blessings and curses.
When we bought our home 30 years ago, we needed to do some major work to get the lawn back up to snuff. We fertilized, added weed killer, aerated and over seeded. Finally it began to look like something. Not quite a carpet, but you actually could walk barefoot on it.
Then came the quack grass. Not to be confused with crab grass…which is fairly easy to manage. No, quack grass has long, horizontal roots. Once you think you have killed it in one patch, it pops up in another spots. Evil tendrils of lawn killing death. I am imagining it in an episode of Star Trek on some remote planet strangling the life out of the world’s inhabitants. But I digress.
We tried everything to kill the stuff. Every weed killer known to man. No amount of aerating or seeding would help. Second chance for the lawn? No. Third, fourth and fifth. So we decided it was time. We wiped out the whole thing. Good grass and weeds alike. The place looked like we had transported it to the deserts of Arizona. All we needed was some cactus and tumbleweeds. In fact, an aerial photographer tried to sell photos of our neighbor’s properties and the selling point was that at least their yards didn’t look anything like the mess around our house. After a prolonged waiting period, we were able to get new seed to grow and the lawn was restored.
We gave our lawn a chance to recover. As did the master (God) when the gardener (Jesus) bargained for the life of the fruitless fig tree in today’s Gospel from Luke:
“There once was a person who had a fig tree planted in his orchard,
and when he came in search of fruit on it but found none,
he said to the gardener,
‘For three years now I have come in search of fruit on this fig tree
but have found none.
So cut it down.
Why should it exhaust the soil?’
He said to him in reply,
‘Sir, leave it for this year also,
and I shall cultivate the ground around it and fertilize it;
it may bear fruit in the future.
If not you can cut it down.’” (Luke 13:6-9)
We don’t know how that tree did the following season. It may have produced fruit, it may have been cut down or maybe the master was once again convinced to allow the tree to have another chance at fulfilling its mission. Christ died for us so that we can receive the gift of a second chance. Of being forgiven of our mistakes and coming closer to bearing the fruit he intended for us to produce. To grow and mature and be ready for the kingdom that he has prepared for us.
When we first set up our veterinary practice we needed to hire a veterinary assistant. Money was tight but we found a program at the local high school that placed students into jobs that they might be interested in pursuing after graduation, if college was no in their plans. We were matched with a Sophomore student who had some behavioral issues at school and at home. She was in danger of being suspended. The director of the program saw something in her and worked with her as she adapted to working as an animal assistant in our practice. It was not smooth sailing at first. Attendance issues, performance lapses, etc. But her director stood by her. She eventually graduated high school and became a vital employee for us. She went on to get her degree as a certified veterinary technician and now works in a large veterinary specialty clinic in the imaging department. A perfect person? No. But none of us are. But one person gave her a chance to become the best version of her self (as Matthew Kelly would say).
The weed infested lawn, that little fig tree and our veterinary tech. And the errors we all make every day that someone sees, forgives and then gives us the opportunity to make amends, change direction and grow. The potential to become the person God intended exists in each of us. The same potential in each one of us that God sees and Jesus died for. God doesn’t make mistakes. May we all act towards one another as that gardener did for the fig tree. Water, fertilize, care for and wait patiently for God’s fruit to appear.
