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The Fig Tree

By Lindsay Howes.


On the fourth day after Nathanael was admitted to Addenbrookes Paediatric Intensive Care Unit with catastrophic head and brain injuries, he took a turn for the worse. The pressure and swelling in his brain became life threatening and I had to make the agonising decision on my own to send him for emergency brain surgery - under the knife there was a very high possibility he would die but without the surgery he would surely die.


After the team had prepared him and left with all the equipment, machinery, monitors, syringe drivers, ventilator, oxygen etc, the intensive care room was suddenly very very empty and quiet and I was alone. I saw a window over the other side of the room so I went and looked out. Down below there was a small garden and directly under the window was a large fig tree. It had been cut back very very hard. I had to look twice but there were definitely signs of new growth and tiny new fruit appearing. I knew God was with us and He was showing me. 

When Nathanael was well enough to go outside the hospital, a couple of months later, we went together and found that fig tree in the garden.


After we had left hospital and Rehab and been home a while, some 18 months or so later we bought ourselves a fig tree for our own garden, albeit small and twiggy. This year it’s real first fruits have appeared and through it God speaks to my heart of His work in our lives of severe pruning, hard seasons, His grace, if we allow Him, to change our character, and the fruit that He will bring in His time not ours if we can hold on to hope. 


 “Every branch in me that does not bear fruit He takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit” (John 15:2).

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Oiur heavenly Father loves to speak through the plants in our gardens, or so I have found. May your fig tree continue to flourish and fruit and remind you of His love for you whenever you look at it. The Lord Jesus always walks the hard paths with us. May you continually know His presence with you as a family.

PS My own fig tree, now four years old, is stedfastly refusing to fruit, but it is in a large tub not in the ground. Maybe there is a lesson there for me.

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