Just checking in <3

We are mid-way through Holy Week.

I have been reading the passages our church sends via text each morning that recount the events of Jesus’ week long journey to the Cross.

I find myself stuck like a broken record on the cursing of the Fig Tree as it kicks off a string of encounters and parables that make up Jesus’ final teachings that week.

Like rapid fire, the Scriptures zing us with a side of Jesus that just doesn’t sound like a flannel board, “bring the children unto Me”, peace and love kind of Jesus.

First, we see Him hungry on His way to town and an unproductive fig tree displeases Him so …

boom…

He, who fasted forty days, and then resisted the temptation to turn stones into bread when He well could have…

He, who spoke Creation into being…

pronounces final judgment on this underperforming tree and it quite literally meets its maker and is no more.

Does this sound like Jesus?

I sit and ponder the thought of Him withering a fig tree right before His disciples eyes.

Yes, I understand the implications of Israel represented as a Fig Tree and the warning and the seriousness of their backsliding and missing the truth that He is Messiah…

but I also think of how Scripture speaks three ways.

To the situation when it happened…

To the purpose of God in His-story…

and to us who are reading it.

And while I get the pronouncement against God’s people, I can’t help but notice that the very next passage is about the chief priests and elders confronting Jesus and challenging His authority to teach the Word.

I have to think that the disciples, like me right now, would be thinking…

uhm….well…

if you can pretty much kill a fig tree by speaking to it…I would say you have whatever “authority” you need to do anything you want to do.

So I am holding on to that thought right here and right now today.

That Jesus was encouraging His disciples for the battle that would come for their faith.

In our mixed up, out-of-order-world of craziness there are most likely several groups that would defend the life of a tree before they would a human being…

but the truth is ….

Jesus has authority over both.

All life…

all death…

ALL E.V.E.R.Y.T.H.I.N.G.

is

in

His

Hands.

We, like the disciples, will see His authority tested and questioned and challenged.

Remember who He is <3