One bucketful with my old backhoe and I could tell right away that I was into some really good dirt. I guess a lot of folks don’t know good dirt when they see it, or maybe there’s a lot of people who’ve never had the opportunity to work with soil and so wouldn’t be able to distinguish one type of dirt from another, but I’ve been working gardens and such for decades, and this loam from the edge of the woods looks and smells like it belongs under some tomato plants.

I took the opportunity this morning to remove a big old plum tree from my back yard. The thing just hasn’t produced any plums for several years now. It sends root runners out into my garden and plum saplings are constantly shooting up from the roots and always in places where I don’t want them. That tree was a sort of landmark here and I had mixed emotions about getting rid of it. My dogs seem to feel the same because it was a good shade tree for those hot summer days of dripping doggie tongues, but it’s out of there now and we’re all just going to have to get used to it. There are plenty of shade trees out there. Filling the hole in the yard is where the fresh dirt comes in.

While I was tugging at the stump with the backhoe I was reminded of that fig tree that Jesus cursed for the same reason I got rid of my plum tree – non-productivity. He used the incident with the tree to demonstrate to us how He feels about things (or people) that do not avail themselves of opportunity to bear fruit. He wasn’t pleased to say the least. There are several ways to bear fruit for Jesus, He said that if we even give a disciple a cup of water there’s a reward for us. We have opportunities all the time to encourage our brothers and sisters to hold fast to their faith.

If we know that we are supposed to bear fruit to the glory of the Lord and yet do not do so, we might find ourselves in the same predicament as that fig tree. When I first read that passage about that fig tree, my interpretation was that Jesus was hungry and went to the tree for a fig to eat and was disappointed and angry because He was hungry and there was nothing to eat on what should have been a fruitful tree. I should have known better, Jesus just ain’t that shallow nor vindictive. He knew what it was like to be hungry. No, He was, as is typical for Him, using the incident as a teaching moment – all the way to the next day when the tree was dead and shriveled up. Did you get the message? I must admit, it took me a while, but the more I come to know Jesus and His ways, the easier things like that are to understand.

Jesus’ ministry is full of lessons for us if we but open our eyes and hearts to His remarkable truth. His time to establish His covenant and His ministry was very short, so every word He spoke had profound meaning – He didn’t waste words or opportunities to make impactful lessons for His followers. He continues to do so today, if we choose to listen with our hearts. He said in the Sermon on the Mount that blessed are the pure at heart for they shall see God. Wow! But didn’t the scriptures say that we cannot lay eyes on God or we would die? What did Jesus mean by saying the pure at heart shall see God? This one is yet another opportunity to understand Him, for we know from scriptures that one day we will all stand before – and thus see – God; even the not pure at heart will see God then, so what did He mean?

He was speaking of the here and now, we have the opportunity to see God, not with our eyes, but with our hearts. But only if that heart is pure; honest, and never trying to fool ourselves into believing things that go against Jesus’ teaching. If we are completely honest with our Lord, even about things that make us uncomfortable or ashamed, it’s only then that we can allow Jesus to teach us things – more often than not, things about ourselves – and chastise us when we’re wrong, and a window miraculously opens that blesses us with the opportunity to experience fellowship with the Almighty in ways we never imagined. We “see” God in nature, in His Word, in the heavens, in the hearts of our fellow travelers, and this simply as a result of surrendering our foolish pride to a hitherto unexperienced and unpracticed purity, or honesty with God, but just as crucially, with ourselves.

The kind of purity of heart to which Jesus refers is of a profound nature and of necessity cannot be casually inculcated. It might require a complete rethinking of our political leanings – we might find ourselves entertaining notions we would otherwise have rejected in our quest for this consummate fellowship with God. Maybe we stop and fish our wallet out to help that beggar we always held in disdain because we were so convinced he could get a job if he was worth his salt. We come to realize things like those “illegal” aliens we have always abhorred might just deserve a bit of empathy and maybe even some help to get a leg up in a callous world that has been cruel to them at every turn. When you determine to become pure at heart as Jesus means it, you begin a journey that you will be on for the rest of your life if you are sincere.

Then at some point, like being hit with a bale of hay going sixty miles an hour, you will realize that you actually can see God – it’ll be so obvious when you realize that you could have seen Him all along – if only you’d been looking with your heart instead of your eyes. When we are admonished to watch as well as pray, this is the same sense – we are to watch with our hearts as well as our eyes. When we see evil overtaking the world, we have the full opportunity to see it for what it is and not what some talking head tells us, because God has given us a conscience as our moral compass to guide us. Many people can be convinced that some evil thing is somehow good if they do not have a moral bearing from the Holy Spirit. That’s one of the many things that separates the believers from those who are not pure at heart.

Walk confidently through this journey, always remembering He is beside you at every step. When something goes awry, take courage that you are not facing it alone. Pray for the purity of heart of which this post speaks, and be prepared for some uncomfortable bumps in the road for the Lord promises that He chastises those He loves, and it’s not always pleasant while it’s happening, but if you are sincere, you’ll come out a better person for it. A better person with increasing purity of heart which will increasingly allow you to “see” God. And you’ll also find yourself becoming a fruitful tree.

May the blessings of the Almighty Father find and keep us.

MK