Week 1 May 2026, Devotion Part 1

Let it alone, sir, this year also, till I dig about it and put on manure. And if it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.  Luke 13:8-9

The hothouse Christian would just as soon grow ornamental fruit. His face grows waxen at the prospect of a spirited worker showing up armed with a spade and sheep dung. While getting his fly swatter and face mask, Mr. Fastidious glimpses an even more ominous device of demise on the man’s handcart. He cannot bring himself to say the word axe. His violent shaking might shatter the walls of his greenhouse.

The gospel writers agree that the crowds actually loved it when Jesus gave one of his fiery woe-to-you speeches. It was no secret that most were aimed at the strutting religious peacocks. Did some of those gleeful onlookers ever cringe as they thought back to their own brush with a fiery tongue? John the Baptist told the “multitudes” who sought him out for baptism that God had an axe to grind with each one of them. “You brood of vipers!” he roared, “Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruits that befit repentance…Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire” (Luke 3:7-9). Part 1 of 2

Comment:  Some unknown person coined the intriguing saying, “Pentecost is the exclamation point to Easter.”  It does make sense to reflect on the Resurrection that would soon put its permanent imprint on the fledgling Church and its reach into the cosmos of John 3:16. The FRUIT of the Spirit listed by Paul in Galatians 5 is contrasted with the WORKS of the flesh. The average Presbyterian churchgoer is hardly that kind ot “fleshly” sinner and need not fear the axe ot the bellowing Baptist.  Neither do we have to contend with a “sorcerer and false prophet named Bar-Jesus.”  That villain deserved what he got, having the nerve to call himself “Son of Jesus.”  In October 2025 Roger Ver, who had renounced his U.S. citizenship and retreated at first to an island in the Caribbean Sea, agreed to pay the IRS nearly 50 million in back taxes to escape criminal charges. The paper said, “He had earned the moniker ‘Bitcoin Jesus’ for his evangelism of crypto currency.”  Never having been bitten by the money bug, those news just merited a glimpse. Ver's religious “nickname,” however, wormed its way into my brain as being far from just a curiosity.  This is the crux of the matter: How do we post-Easter Christians go about evangelizing our neighborhoods, families, and friends?  Both our preacher and the Holy Spirit stress the ”going” outside the hothouse of risk-free witnessing.  The “vine-ripened” tomatoes grown in the greenhouse are free of bugs and blemishes, and even taste great.  But if the risen Jesus is the vine and we are the branches, that kind of Christian tomato sauce isn’t fit to be marketable.  To God it’s a matter of urgency to get His “show” on the road.  He knows how much digging and dung each one of us should actually welcome.  How much time does He allot for that process, we might be wondering for an uncomfortable moment.