The Fig Leaf

Standing in front of Tricia's kitchen window looking due east will cast your focus on one of our neighbor's fig trees.  We don't have a fig tree of our own and don't really need one because our neighbors allow us to pick all the figs we want off of it each year.  They don't have chickens so we barter and give them eggs in exchange for figs. That's a nice trade which happens to be a nice tax free transaction that has an added benefit of being insulated from the devaluation in our paper currency.

In the summertime when the figs are ripe, you can walk by the tree loaded with the sticky sweet fruit and eat them right off the tree.  We also bring them home, wash them, and freeze them to be used in baking or especially added to kefir and local honey and blended to make a healthy smoothie.  You can also make fig preserves which serve as the base for the sweetest cakes in the South!

Fig trees aren't evergreens and they lose all of their leaves each winter.  One of the signs of Spring is when you see the brilliant green baby fig leaves first appearing on the barren fig tree.  At dusk the other evening, I took a few photos of the fig leaves.

New Fig Leaves marking Spring

Fig trees have a neat history.  They are the third tree to be listed in the Bible behind the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.  Actually Adam & Eve's eating of the fruit of the second tree listed necessitated the mentioning of the fig tree. Genesis 3:7 says that once they ate the fruit, their eyes were opened and they realized they were naked and they sewed fig leaves together to cover their nakedness.

It was also the tree that Jesus cursed because it bore no fruit and is a tree that could refer to Israel.  A most interesting reference to me is Matthew 24:32

"Now learn the parable from the fig tree: when its branch has already become tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near;  

Matthew 24 is a very interesting chapter as it deals with Christ's return.  Harvest takes place in summer and the context of the verse is to BE READY!  No man knows the hour or the day, but he said he would return and that settles it for me.
  

A fresh, new garment!

So the fig tree in the neighbor's yard has become tender and is putting on leaves and I must ask myself, "Am I Ready?"

Be Ready for His Coming

42 “Therefore be on the alert, for you do not know which day your Lord is coming. 43 But be sure of this, that if the head of the house had known at what time of the night the thief was coming, he would have been on the alert and would not have allowed his house to be broken into. 44 For this reason you also must be ready; for the Son of Man is coming at an hour when you do not think He will.

45 “Who then is the faithful and sensible slave whom his master put in charge of his household to give them their food at the proper time? 46 Blessed is that slave whom his master finds so doing when he comes. 47 Truly I say to you that he will put him in charge of all his possessions. 48 But if that evil slave says in his heart, ‘My master is not coming for a long time,’ 49 and begins to beat his fellow slaves and eat and drink with drunkards; 50 the master of that slave will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour which he does not know, 51 and will cut him in pieces and assign him a place with the hypocrites; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.