Do You Like Yourself?

In today’s Lesson, after telling the crowds that unless they repent they will perish, Jesus tells a parable about a fig tree that hasn’t borne any fruit for three years. The owner wants it destroyed. But the man in charge of cultivating and cutting and pruning appeals to the owner to spare the tree: “Sir, leave it one more year,” he says, “and give me time to dig around it and manure it; it may bear fruit next year; if not, then you can cut it down” (Luke 13:8-9).

An Air Force veteran recalls his “survival school” training in which, among other things, he learned the finer points of fighting sharks. He says that one of the instructors summed up the proper technique as follows: “If a shark approaches with jaws shut, try to kick it in the snout to shoo it away. But if the shark approaches with jaws open, thrust one of your legs into its throat and try to do as…