The Weeping Fig

This plant is a weeping fig. It's my mother's. She roots them easily and has quite a few of various sizes, throughout her house. She gave me one that flourished, and I put it in a beautiful pot. But I didn't keep mine in the house; I put it on the patio. And three times now, I've burnt it up -- dried it thoroughly with too much sun, and killed off all the greenery.

So now my weeping fig looks like this. Actually, it looks better than it did. Now it has that little tuft of green.

Ignoring that tuft of green, doesn't the rest of it look absolutely dead? I wrote once before of how this plant comes back. (And once before that ....) But three times? How many killing-it-offs can one plant tolerate? How many times can it be Dead As A Doornail, and recover?

Have you ever felt like this plant looks? Burnt up and weary? You just want to tell the Gardener, "Leave me alone! Can't you see I'm dead already!"

Underneath it all, deep in the darkness, you have roots. All they need is moisture and time. It may look ugly on top of the soil for a while, and the recovery is time-consuming. It's supposed to be. It takes time for the nourishment and moisture in the roots to reach up, grow new stems, and form new green leaves.

Especially if you're involved in ministry, you've probably been burnt by fellow-believers, and left feeling dry, ugly, lifeless, useless. Find a place that will "moisturize" your roots, a place of spiritual nourishment. Spend time with people who pray, a lot. Spend hours immersed in Scripture and spiritual reading by good authors. Expose yourself to beauty -- in music, art, nature, kind people, literature. Give yourself time to heal, if you can. Growth, renewed life, and ministry will come again, later.

I'm saying all this to myself. Maybe someone out there needs to read this too, right now.