The Christmas Cactus

Luke 13:6He (Jesus) also spoke this parable: “A certain man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard, and he came seeking fruit on it and found none. 7Then he said to the keeper of his vineyard, ‘Look, for three years I have come seeking fruit on this fig tree and find none. Cut it down; why does it use up the ground?’ 8But he answered and said to him, ‘Sir, let it alone this year also, until I dig around it and fertilize it.9And if it bears fruit, well. But if not, after that you can cut it down.’ ”








One of the things that I have to keep reminding myself is that on any given day anyone can change!  In The Ministry, we work with people.  People are our fields of labor and changed lives are a part of our harvest.  We can't change people and we need to settle that in our hearts but we certainly are co-laborers with Christ.  When Jesus said he would build His Church, He didn't mean alone.  He enlists people to reach, enable and launch other lives.  Regarding the parable above, how does this fit into seeing people change?  It's an easy thing to say, "people have a choice and they must chose to change."  That is true but there is a time when people are immobilized by fears, struggles, disillusionment and hopelessness.  In that condition we may be hard pressed to see the choice happening.  We have a little Christmas cactus.  It's kind of a joke because we can't remember how many years we have carried this thing around.  It would just sit year after year, Christmas after Christmas and take up planter space.  I have started to throw it out more than once.  Then a few months ago I thought, "I'll give this thing one more chance."  I took it out of it's smaller planter, I broke up it's roots( a scary thing) and planted it in new soil in a larger pot, fertilized and watered it.  That was months ago. Well, this morning we went out to move it outside to catch a little rain and what do you know?  It has Christmas blooms!  I was beginning to doubt if it even had blooms in it's DNA!

The world was like that.  It became darker and darker and grew farther and farther away from what God had intended.  Then He sent His Son to earth to stir up and bring new life.  There was a time when a lot of folks had given up on you and me.  We didn't look like we would ever change.  Then the time came and the miracle happened. It's Christmas and there are people around who may be helpless and just need a little digging and shaking and enlarging their arena of life.  I would venture to say that some of you will find a life during this season that IF you will get involved a little, by next Christmas you will see beautiful fruit where it looked hopeless before!