I Samuel  14-17; Mark 13: 27-28

Waiting to be blessed

Hannah is vexed.  She wants a child. She prays and she prays, silently, with her lips moving, but without sound. There is an intensity about her that is troubling to people. Eli thinks she is abusing a substance.  It may be similar to what people say in certain parts of Asia when you stare into space in a temporary dream like stage: they worry you may be starting to take leave of your senses or enter a trance you will not be able to shake.  But it is a prayer of vexation Hannah is praying and in time she will give birth to Samuel.  But that is not the point here for me.  The point is about her intensity in waiting for a blessing in her life where it just isn’t materializing.

Then there is the totally unrelated passage in Mark where Jesus speaks of the fig tree that gets tender at the beginning of summer, when it is time.  The fig will do what it wishes, or what its DNA tells it to do. Friends, some things in life come when we wait, they come on their own time and in their own time.   They may come and make the excitement great beyond our wildest imaginings or they may come when we are no longer excited about them or they may come when we aren’t even noticing anymore.  But something we so fervently wish for that our lips move and we are no longer sounding out the words, some of those things never come.  So we have a choice to be vexed or not.

Friends, plants are smart. They adapt to the surroundings around them, the changes in temperature and humidity, the different kind of soil and nutrients, even, they say, to the plants around them.  But it turns out they are also innately lazy.  They only do what they absolutely need to for survival, not unlike the majority of the human race.  Those who care about plants do a lot of waiting and observing and tweaking.  When it comes to plants and trees I think we care less when we are young and more when grow older for when we are young we want to enjoy and move one and when we are older we like to see things grow.  So we wait and we wait and sometimes we get a little bit vexed.

We have fig tree in our yard. It hasn’t born fruit and maybe it won’t. But I don’t complain, because, you see, it just blew in one day, although I don’t know what day. It blew in from across a neighbors’  fence or from across the creek or from the side of the river, or from across the freeway, or from by the school where our sons went where there is one tree clearly marked: edible fig.  It chose a spot by the fence and it is sprouting new leaves right now.  I have no demands for it. It is a gift. Let it do what it wants when it wants.

This, friends, is not how we feel about all plants.  I planted plumeria branches my sister-in-law in San Diego gave us in pots and they are happy in the sun all summer until grows cold.  But this year no flowers. I waited. One never produced but the other one started sprouting them six weeks ago and they are still going.  Were they too happy and too well cared for that they got lazy, saying I am fine, who needs flowers?  Then there is the Bird of paradise we planted in front of the house over the protest of the neighborhood garden police.  That was five years ago.  We assumed it was the wrong place or that the neighborhood association had intimidated it. Then two weeks ago, voila , three flowers emerging. They haven’t opened. They may not, but worth the wait nevertheless. Planter’s vindication.

Friends, what if Hannah’s life were like a flower? What if when she was so focused on the blessing she was desperate for and somewhere in her life a blessing appeared that she couldn’t notice, because her vexation was killing her. Maybe that is not a question that is proper for us to ask. But I think we can ask those question of our lives, of all our lives.  What blessing are we waiting for, one that may not come until we can longer enjoy it or one that will never come?  We do that, don’t we friends. We pick our blessing and we won’t let go and we focus on it, but then one day we turn around and we see that something is blooming or growing in the garden of our life that we haven’t noticed, something that just blew in on the  wind and keeps us company.  God’s blessings and surprises are all around us. Surely we must grieve for the ones we never got to touch or smell.  Yet we must also notice what we have refused to notice.  They are not blessings in disguise, but ignored blessings.  We talked about the church and while we are focused on the things we wish we had or the things we could guarantee, blessings are emerging in this congregation, people showing up out of the blue, donations coming where we never expected them,  quiet hard working people tending our garden every week.  The fact that we are here as a community. All blessings. They all appear while we worry about the parking lot. Gifts like the fig tree seed in the wind, becoming a blessing in their own time.  Friends, what blessing are you holding on to and which ones are you missing? May God give us insight.