I Put It By The Bin And Took It Back In

You carried it out.

You had decided the night before. You had looked at it for the better part of a month and told yourself that at some point a person has to be sensible, and you picked it up and you took it out and you stood it beside the trash can.

And then you came back in and washed your hands and made coffee, and about forty minutes later you went back out and got it.

You have not told anybody that.

Because there is no version of that sentence that sounds like a competent adult. You threw out a plant and then retrieved it from beside the trash can, and it is still not doing well, and it is back on the sill where it was.

So let me say the thing that I think has been sitting under this, unspoken, since you brought it back in.

You did not do something stupid.

Let it alone this year also

There is a short exchange in Luke about exactly this, and it is Jesus telling it.

Then said he unto the dresser of his vineyard, Behold, these three years I come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and find none: cut it down; why cumbereth it the ground? And he answering said unto him, Lord, let it alone this year also, till I shall dig about it, and dung it. (Luke 13:7-8, King James Version)

Read who says what in that.

The owner is being reasonable. Three years is a long time, the tree is doing nothing, and the ground it stands on could hold something that works. Cut it down. That is not cruelty. That is management, and anybody would sign off on it.

And the man who actually tends it says: let it alone this year also.

He does not argue with the assessment. He does not claim the tree is secretly fine. He does not promise fruit next season. He asks for time, and he offers to do the unglamorous work in the meantime.

You are standing in the same place that vinedresser stood in, and asking for one more season has never once been a failure of judgment. Luke 13:8 puts those words in the mouth of the one who knows the tree best, and the Holy Spirit is the one who says them over a woman who went back out to the trash can.

Notice that the story does not tell us what happened to the tree. Jesus stops before the ending. We are not told whether it fruited.

That matters here more than almost anything else. The parable does not hang on the outcome. It hangs on the request, and the request is granted.

You were never required to know how it ends before you were allowed to ask for more time, and the not knowing has never once disqualified the asking. The Spirit of God carries that over a windowsill, and it is the written word in Luke and not my opinion that leaves the ending off the page.

What the walk back out was actually about

Here is what I think happened in those forty minutes, and see whether it fits.

The plant went out because keeping it had started to feel like a character flaw. Not because it was in the way. Not because you needed the pot. It went out because some voice with a reasonable tone said this is silly now.

And then you sat with coffee and the silliness did not lift. What lifted instead was the other thing, the small private grief of having thrown out something living because it was inconvenient to be the kind of person who keeps it.

So you went back out.

That is not indecision. That is two true things in one woman, and both of them are honest. One of them says be sensible. The other one says that is a living thing and I am not done.

You are a person who went back out into the cold for something that could not ask you to, and that instinct has never once been a defect in you. The Holy Spirit is the one who puts a hand on that, and the word of Luke 13 stands over it: let it alone this year also.

And I want to be exact about what I am not saying. I am not saying it lives. I do not know that.

It may go anyway. The vinedresser dug about that tree and we are never told the tree made it.

You have not been asked to guarantee the ending, and no outcome on that sill has ever once been the thing being measured about you. Luke 13:8 asks for a season and nothing more, and the Spirit of God is the one who keeps that request from becoming a promise.

Keeping is not the same as hoping

There is a distinction here that will take the weight off.

Hoping is a posture toward the future. It looks forward, it leans, and it can be disappointed. Keeping is a posture toward the present, and it cannot be disappointed at all, because it is already complete in the doing of it.

Hoping about this plant is exhausting, because every leaf becomes a report on whether the hope was justified.

Try keeping instead.

Keeping says: this stays on my windowsill. I will water it when it needs water. I will give it the light I have. I am not running a trial and there is no verdict scheduled.

That is a much smaller job and it is the one you were actually built for. The vinedresser did not hope at the tree. He dug about it. There is a whole world of difference.

You are free to keep that plant without hoping at it, and tending in the present has never once required a forecast. The Holy Spirit is the one who makes that distinction hold, and Luke 13:8 is the written ground under it.