Vessel & Altar

"Sir, leave it for this year also, and I shall cultivate the ground around it." - Luke 13:8

A fig tree hasn't produced in three years, Sister, and the owner's ready to cut it down. The gardener asks for one more season, offering to dig around it and feed the ground himself, not just hope it improves on its own. Patience, joined to actual, unglamorous work.

There were years during my formation for the diaconate when I'd go sit in a coffee shop in the evenings to get through a class assignment, work on a paper, whatever the week required. Some nights it went well. Other nights, especially with a stack of dense theology in front of me, I'd come home having barely made a dent. My wife would ask how much I'd gotten done, and I'd have to say honestly, not much. She never let that be the end of the conversation. She'd push me gently toward the next night, and remind me she had the house handled, that she was there holding it together so I could keep going.

You are being filled so that something can be set on the table.

That's the gardener's role, played out in an ordinary marriage over years rather than one dramatic scene. She wasn't waiting for me to produce fruit on a schedule. She kept tending the ground, night after night, trusting there'd be something to show for it eventually, long before there was any guarantee of that. If you've ever been the one digging around someone else's roots, feeding ground you might not see bear fruit for years, this reading is your patron too.

Think of someone you've been patiently cultivating, in yourself or someone you love, without yet seeing the fruit. Do one small, concrete thing to tend it again this week, on purpose.

Lord, thank you for everyone who's dug around my own roots and fed the ground without needing to see fruit right away. Let me tend someone else's ground with that same patience. Amen.