Who is unfruitful? Who doesn’t understand the concept of helping those who need help the most? How can you do it when the strength and grace of your years have passed and there is still only enough for one’s self?
When the moment of truth is upon any of us the meaning is clear. Be ready with fruit (resources gained through effort and steady fulfillment of the ability to prosper with the time you’ve been given) in hand when you are asked to share.
When help is needed does it matter if you have the ability to help right at that moment? When someone is hungry does it matter if you have the ability to give to him or her what the body needs? When a word fitly spoken in due season is critical do you have the wisdom and maturity to reveal the answer desired?
The answer to all these questions must be yes! (Reference Mark 11, verses 12 – 14). The serious nature of being fruitful in due season doesn’t mean fairness or patience to wait upon any of us to blossom at the right time. If you believe the ‘one greater than all of us’ has given us the time, then the expectation is that all of us should be fruitful when the ‘one greater than us all’ needs us.
Even human beings can’t wait on other human beings to be prosperous or successful. Family can’t wait on the breadwinner (whether it be a man or a woman) to come up with the goods to feed the flock. If you knew you couldn’t come through, why did you have children in the first place? This applies to both the man and the woman! I know it sounds harsh, but we are given plenty of time to make our lives mean, hopefully goodness, to ourselves and to humanity as a whole.
Here are some suggestions. Acknowledge the truth of giving fuel to human weaknesses by lowering the safeguards to weapons that can instantly kill human beings. Silence is also a huge motivator to the mischievous among us. The wrong that goes unaddressed, unchallenged and unresolved is the wrong that spreads like a disease infecting the perpetrators and the victims.
There are people that suffer from a mental condition that reveals itself in an inflated sense of self worth. Being in possession of huge sums of money doesn’t make you a spiritual leader. While being a spiritual leader comes with the requirement that you don’t sell your birthright (for a morsel of meat as Esau) to the lowest bidder!
Let me end with this. A fig tree can blossom twice a year, which means that when Jesus came to the fig tree to eat of it and it was barren, the fig tree committed an offense and it was cursed! The fig tree should have been fruitful, but it was not.
Listen, I’ve been responsible for my life, to produce for it, for 32 years and the one thing I have figured out in that length of time is that it is easy to feed only one person. The problem I’ve seen is that most people don’t understand or calculate that the cost of life increases exponentially when you vow to take care of another human being. If you can’t honestly say that I am ready to have children or take care of a spouse, then do not attempt fate.
Life is not easy nor is it hard. Life is laced with sufficient difficulty that is uniform for all of us. Don’t blame your neighbor for your troubles if you choose to not learn the basic principles that are proven to make life better. Lastly, don’t add to your difficulties. We have plenty difficulties already assigned to us and we don’t want to be caught short when we are called upon to feed a hungry visitor.