Although The Fig Tree Does Not Blossom

Four people have found a bright side for her since March and every one of them loves her.

That is what makes it so hard to be angry about. Her sister found one. A woman at church found two, in the same conversation, which was impressive. Her son, who is thirty-one and was doing his best, found one on the phone and she could hear that he had thought about it in advance.

Every one of them said something true. That is the other thing. Nobody said anything stupid, nobody quoted a verse badly, and none of them told her it was for the best.

They just each arrived with something to put on top of it, and left, and she was alone again in a kitchen with the actual thing.

The answer was no. That is the whole of the situation and there is no need for the details, and it was a definite no rather than a not yet, and she is seventy-six and there is not another way round.

And what she wanted, and has not had once since March, is somebody to sit in the kitchen and let it be as bad as it is for about twenty minutes.

If people keep improving things for you, come and sit down. Nothing is going to be added on top of anything here.

The poet lists the losses in full and does not take one back

Here is the passage, and the famous half is the second half, and the first half is the reason the second half is worth anything.

Although the fig tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines; the labour of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat; the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stalls.Habakkuk 3:17

Count them. Six.

The figs, the vines, the olives, the fields, the flock, the herd. That is not a poetic gesture at hardship, it is a complete inventory of every source of food and income an agricultural family had, listed one by one, with nothing left out and nothing softened.

He does not write: although things are difficult. He does not write: although there have been some setbacks. He goes through the whole list, slowly, and names each thing that is gone.

And then, and only then, comes the sentence everybody knows.

Notice what he does not do at any point. He does not find a bright side. He does not say the olives may recover. He does not mention that the family is still together or that they have their health. Not one of the six losses gets improved, qualified or reduced anywhere in the passage.

You are being written about by somebody who counted the losses out one at a time, and it was already the right way round. Habakkuk 3:17 is where that sits, in a full inventory that precedes the famous line, and the same Spirit who let all six items stay in the song is the one who reaches a woman alone in a kitchen in March.

Why the four of them did it, and why it did not work

Now let me be fair to her sister and to the woman at church and especially to her son, because she is not going to be able to receive anything until they are dealt with properly.

They were not being shallow. Every one of them was doing the only thing they had.

Here is what happens. Somebody you love tells you something that cannot be fixed, and you feel the whole weight of it arrive, and there is nothing to do with the weight, and a human being under a weight with nothing to do reaches for something to say. And the thing available is always a bright side, because a bright side is the only sentence that seems to reduce the load.

It does not reduce the load. It moves it. What it actually does is make it impossible for her to say how bad it is, because she would now have to argue against the kind thing they just said, and nobody does that to somebody who is trying to help.

So each of those four conversations left her more alone than before it started, and every one of them was an act of love, and that is the cruel arithmetic of the whole thing and not one of the five people involved did anything wrong.

You have a place where the whole inventory can be said without anybody improving it, and it was already open. He promised it, in the psalm that invites people to pour out their heart before Him because He is a refuge, which does not ask for a positive ending (Psalm 62:8), and His Spirit does not reach for a bright side.

The paragraph that outranks the teaching

Before we go on, this outranks everything above it, and at seventy-six it is not small print.

Some people must not go without food. If you live with diabetes, if you are pregnant or nursing, if you take medication, if you have ever had a hard relationship with food or with eating, if you are underweight, unwell, frail or elderly, or if you are simply not sure, speak to your doctor first and let their answer be the answer. There is no length on this page, no kind of fast, no plan and no schedule, and there is not going to be one here.

And nothing on this site is a lever, and nothing here suggests that any practice would have produced a different answer, or that a different answer is available if something is done differently now. There is no mechanism on this page and there never was one.

Privacy is about audience and never about hiding, too. Telling your doctor is right. Telling your son is right. Telling whoever cooks in your house is right and it is basic sense. None of it fails anything.

You have been fully inside this, and you were never at its edge because of your age or your health. Scripture settled that where God receives according to what a person has (2 Corinthians 8:12), and the Spirit of God is not given out according to what anybody is able for.

If today is heavier than a page can hold, call somebody real: your doctor, a counselor, or a crisis line, and the emergency services if you or anybody near you is in danger tonight.