9/7/21

 Lessons From the Fig Tree

            In the morning as they passed by, they saw the fig tree withered away to its roots.  Then Peter remembered and said to him, “Rabbi, look! The fig tree that you cursed has withered.”  Jesus answered them, “Have faith in God.  Truly I tell you, if you say to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’ and if you do not doubt in your heart, but believe that what you say will come to pass, it will be done for you. So I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.”

Mark 11:20-24

            This passage has made me cry more than any other section of Scripture.  Jesus says that if you say something…if you pray something and you do not doubt and you really believe, it will happen.  And yet I have prayed things earnestly and hopefully and full of belief that have not happened.  I have prayed for healings for myself.  I have prayed for healing for my son.  I have prayed for marriages to be saved and bodies to be restored and lives to be transformed…and I have woken up the next day and found that the heart-rending circumstances were exactly the same as when I went to bed.  That is not the worst part.

            See…I believed.  I hoped.  I asked as earnestly as I knew how to ask and nothing happened.  And now I want to know why…and there are no good answers.

·         Pastors have told me that I didn’t believe…not really.  I must have doubted God and so He did not perform the miracle.  If I would only be less sinful and more pure, God would be able to move.  It is my fault that God could not do a miracle and the remaining suffering is on my head.

·         Non-believers have told me that Jesus is lying.  Either He does not exist or He is impotent or He does not care and I am wasting my life trying to live up to an imaginary ideal that has no ability to change my world.

·         Well-meaning believers have told me that I was simply asking for the wrong things.  If my heart was truly aligned with God’s then I would want what He wanted and I would only ask for things that He was going to do anyway and so I would not waste everyone’s time by asking for things that I really care about, like my son’s health.

And so I am left with either God is a scam or I am too broken.  And both those are painful realities to live in.

            Then I think about when my own son asks me for things.  Usually his requests come at night as I am sitting down next to his bed, watching his body twitch as he tries to fall asleep.  When he wants something, do I wait for him to ask perfectly, using exactly the right words and voice inflection before I will respond to him?  Of course not.  Do I say “yes” or “no” to everything?  Of course not.  Most of the time I say, “We will see.”  His desires constantly change.  His capacity to receive new things is never certain and sometimes granted requests lead to tears and pain more than denials.  So I do not promise that we will; I do not promise that we will not.  What I promise is that I will be with him tomorrow and we will work through his request together.

            What if God takes this approach with us?  What if there are some times that God holds off giving us our hearts’ desires because He knows that we cannot hold anything else in our hands, good or bad?  What if He knows that there are some times that we need to take a rest before we are given a new gift? 

            I tend to think of God sitting in a Board Room, reading memos that contain my requests and stamping them with “Approved” or “Denied.”  What if instead He is sitting next to my bed at night as my mind races and my eyes won’t close…what if he leans forward to hear my panic and my fears and my requests?  What if He answers all those things by simply promising that we will see what tomorrow holds and we will face it together?

           

A moment to reflect:

What do your kids ask for the most? What do you ask God for the most?