Are You Bearing Fruit, By Rick Stevens, Fiat Ventures

“Are You Bearing Fruit?”  by Rick Stevens, Fiat Ventures

Third Sunday of Lent

Everyone who has ever traveled to Scotland will agree that it is a beautiful country.  Beautiful as long as you are not a farmer.  Scotland is simply not renowned for being a fertile place to cultivate crops. The soil is acidic, silty, full of rocks and the climate is harsh.

So when Cameron and Moira Thompson set out to turn their lifeless land near Perthshire into a farm, the locals had a good laugh.  Cameron did some research and found that if he re-mineralized the soil, it would be suitable for cultivation.

Off he went to the local quarry to start hauling rock dust back to his property to lay on the ground.  Twenty years later, it is the Thompsons who have the last laugh. Their farm grows a wide variety of the largest vegetables anyone in the United Kingdom has ever seen. Not only that, but the fruit trees he planted at the same time have grown to marvelous heights and regularly produce bountiful harvests of fresh fruits.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus uses the parable of the barren fig tree to illustrate what happens to something that is neglected and not properly cared for. The fig tree is in danger of being cut down because it hasn’t produced figs in three years.

The same thing can happen to us if we find ourselves engaging in activities that are not the best for us to grow and flourish. We should look carefully at how we spend our free time.  Do we spend hours binge-watching TV shows or playing video games?  Some entertainment is necessary to help us relax and de-compress but too much and it becomes an obsession.

We should also look at the kind of people we are hanging out with.  Do our friends share the same ideas of how we know we should live our lives?  Or do we find ourselves sometimes in situations where we are pressured to do things that we know are not right.

During this Lenten Season, especially, let’s try and find the most fertile ground in which to plant ourselves. Then let’s cultivate our gifts and talents so that we bear fruit in life.