One more year

 

Haiku of grace

We who are righteous;

God will never punish us.

He has no need to!

When bad stuff happens

we like to blame the victims:

Must be their own fault.

Good people prosper,

bad people are punished. No!

That’s not how it works.

You must all repent

turn from your self-centred ways.

Then you’ll truly live.

Trees that won’t bear fruit:

fig, olive, apple; not worth

space in the garden.

For three years I came

looking for the promised fruit,

but none! Cut it down!

The gardener speaks:

One more year of special care,

let’s see what it does.

One more year. What grace

is shown to those unworthy;

what grace shown to me!

© Ken Rookes 2022

Days of Darkness

 

Eschatological haiku

The days of darkness

are coming upon us all;

the sun will be hid.

The moon will not shine,

and the ever faithful stars

will absent themselves.

We might all be lost,

unable to navigate,

or to find the way.

Will he be coming,

the sky-sweeping Son of Man,

to bring us all home​?

Read the signs, he told

his friends. The fig tree’s lessons

are long forgotten.

The generation

did, in fact, pass away; He

must have got it wrong.

My words will remain

when all else is gone, he said.

Ah, Lord, but which ones?

When not expected

the Master will return. Be

about his business.

© Ken Rookes 2020

Not yet enough

 

Days of darkness,

days of fear.

The sun is hidden,

Even the moon directs its light elsewhere,

bending its rays away from planet earth.

The stars absent themselves,

as if there is not yet enough darkness.

The shadows expand and creep to embrace the forlorn landscape,

growing warmer every day.

The Son of Man, they say,

comes in the clouds to gather the elect.

Does he?

There are signs for those who can read,

but the good christian folk cannot see them,

having found more earthly distractions.

The fig tree’s lessons have been forgotten.

The generation did, in fact, pass away,

as have hundreds since.

Must have got it wrong.

His words, Mark tells us, will remain for all time.

The good christians all concur,

but find it hard to agree on which ones.

The story tells us that the master will return

at an inconvenient hour.

The faithful servants will not be fazed.

© Ken Rookes 2020

To become fruitful

To become fruitful

Haiku for gardeners

Rotten stuff happens

to both good and bad people;

it’s not punishment.

When people suffer,

have empathy; don’t blame them

for imagined sins.

These words are for all;

reflect on where you’re headed,

be ready to change.

A vineyard owner

plants a fig tree, comes looking

for fruit. There is none.

Three years to produce

and still the tree is barren.

Let us get rid of it.

The gardner shows grace.

One more year, some manure

and care: Let’s see.

Always one more chance.

So our master seeks for us

to become fruitful.

The chance to bear fruit;

justice, love and hope-filled peace.

Always one more chance.

© Ken Rookes 2019

under the fig tree

"Here is a Jewish Roots clue.  The term "under the fig tree" is an ancient Jewish idiom that means studying the messianic prophecies.  The idiom stems from Micah 4:4, in a passage describing the future messianic kingdom: Each of them will sit under his vine, and under his fig tree.
...Our first clue to the fact that Nathanael was a scholar of the messianic prophecies is his comment regarding Nazareth.  He knew that scripture clearly taught that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem, but wasn't so sure about the Nazareth connection.

[The prophecy regarding Nazareth is a bit more hidden (Isaiah 11:1 speaks of the branch, which is netzer in Hebrew, and the town of Nazareth, (netzret in Hebrew), means "branch town").]

When Yeshua first spoke to Nathanael, He was referencing the second part of Isaiah 53:9:
Because He had done no violence,
Nor was any deceit in His mouth.

Yeshua was not calling Nathanael righteous. Yeshua was quoting the very prophecy that Nathanael had been studying, in order to emphasize that He Himself was the Messiah."

http://wildbranches.blogspot.com.au/2014/03/under-fig-tree.html

Shine

If Jesus had been strolling around

southern Australia today,

rather than Palestine in the first-century,

he'd have dropped his fig-tree metaphor

and gone with the Jacaranda.

“Look at the Jacaranda,” he'd say.

“When it puts forth its purple-Advent flowers,

to compete luminescently

with the sky and to carpet the earth below

in a circle of blue;

can summer be far behind?

No; nor God's kingdom.”

Hail to you, wondrous tree of purple;

botanical immigrant,

transplanted two hundred years ago

from another new world.

Your dazzling hue has ensured your welcome.

Like the land's many human inhabitants

you regard yourself as a true-born native,

among the greens, reds and yellows

of indigenous eucalypts and wattles.

Hail, Jacaranda!

The arboretum's John the Prophet,

landscape herald of one who is coming

and of the remarkable kingdom

of hope and justice.

(For which, we still yearn.)

For a month you shine, harbinger

of the extraordinary,

until your flowers fall and fade,

your leaves of green resume their rightful place,

and we are returned to our ordinary lives.

There our achings are embraced,

tasks and challenges are taken up,

and we get on with it.

© Ken Rookes 2015

Fig tree fruits

If you repent,
the much-loved doctrine declares,
you will be forgiven.
A simple-enough transaction,
with the reception of forgiveness transmuted,
by divine alchemy, into the golden currency
of paradisiacal admittance.

With much tears and wailing, repentance is enacted,
souls are pronounced saved,
and heaven’s host, we are told, prepares another room.

But what if repentance is no mere turning point,
arrived at once and finally?
What if it is an attitude that grows, develops,
and manifests itself in actions;
many and uncounted, small and large;
with an impetus towards sharing and justice
and generosity and peace?
And what if the second chance grace
is all about such fruitfulness?

Fig tree fruits from plants worth their place
in the garden.

© Ken Rookes 2013