Recently I realized how skeptical I can be when it comes to acts of kindness. Last week my family and I were the recipients of a tremendous act of kindness. These individuals provided us with some help free of charge. No strings attached. Which makes me suspicious. There’s gotta be a catch, I thought to myself. I kept waiting and waiting for the other shoe to drop, but it never did. This was a legitimate act of grace that we didn’t merit or deserve. It’s pretty sad when you’ve conditioned yourself to be skeptical anytime somebody does something kind. Proves what kind of world we live in these days.
I guess that’s what Jesus meant, though, when he cursed the fig tree in Mark 11. This has always seemed like a weird story to me, like it shouldn’t be in the Bible. Jesus just walks up to this fig tree and curses it for not bearing fruit, which seems like no big deal until you realize that it wasn’t even the season for bearing fruit. So why does Jesus fly off the handle? I think he does it because in the Kingdom he’s inaugurating, you should come to expect the unexpected. Swords are beaten into plowshares. The lion and the lamb lie down together. Enmity dissipates. Love is the language we always speak. He curses the fig tree because it represents old wineskins, an old world order, which is altogether inadequate to hold the new Kingdom wine he is pouring. Which leads me back to my original thought: it’s those moments of grace that break through and capture our hearts because they are so uncommon, so otherworldly. But in the Kingdom, those acts of kindness and acts of grace are normative. In the Kingdom, enemies are loved. In the Kingdom, the last comes first. In the Kingdom, figs bloom out of season.
I guess I’ll always approach things like this with a certain amount of skepticism. It just seems to be encoded onto my DNA. But I hope I can get to the point where I see things with Kingdom eyes. I want to see acts of kindness and acts of grace as conduits for the in-breaking of the Kingdom of God.
Else I’m afraid I’m no better than the fig tree.
already & not yet 
I loved reading this Jason. Such great thoughts. Last year when I watched Oprah’s Big Give, most people were very skeptical of the kindness being given to them. It is sad that this is how most of us feel when someone does something nice for us. I can see how so many people feel this way. Look at traffic – how many times will someone actually let you merge? Someone let me over yesterday (after having my blinker on, in crawling traffic, after about 5 minutes) and I felt SO grateful. Isn’t that crazy that we are in such a hurry that we can’t even let ONE car over in front of us. And that is just traffic!!!
Thanks. I know what you mean about being skeptical; I was pretty much raised to be suspicious of everybody. My dad used to tell me, “You can’t trust anybody, son.” And I fight that to this day. I wrote about that here. In fact, this post reminds me of why I started blogging in the first place. Now I tend to blog about meaningless junk. Anyway, thanks for the comment.