Peter JR Smith's Blog

And He told this parable: “A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard, and he came seeking fruit on it and found none. And he said to the vinedresser, “Look, for three years now I have come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and I find none. Cut it down. Why should it use up the ground? And he answered him, “Sir, let it alone this year also, until I dig around it and put on manure. Then if it should bear fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.” Luke 13:6-9

The purpose ...

Am I a horrible person?

Yes.

Well, OK, well let’s expand on this a little.

I understand none of us like to think of ourselves as horrible. And actually, I’ll have to admit up front that I know a good number of people – friends, I might even venture to call them – and family. Christians or otherwise and generally speaking these people who aren’t what you’d normally call horrible people. And I’m willing to concede even you might be in the same sort of category.

Well mannered, respectable, polite a...

The Children in the Marketplace – Luke 7:31-35

In a park one afternoon, I watched a small child pull off his hat and throw it on the ground. Then they started crying because their hat was gone. So their mother put it back on the child’s head. But this wasn’t right either; more tears came. The hat was thrown off… better? No. It was upsetting and there were more tears. The hat went back on. Worse. There was no pleasing this child. I began to think, “This isn’t about the hat…”

In Luke, Chapte...

The Parable of The Two Builders: Matthew 7:24-27

It’s a summer day in our garden in rural Warwickshire. My grandfather – a large man in tight shorts – is slowly lowering himself into a deck chair. We hear a sound, like a long zipping noise and the splitting of wood. When we look up, Grandad is on the grass, tangled in chair wreckage and trying to save his lemonade. 

That was the day our grandad became a living parable, and the lesson he taught us was this: before you put your weight on som...

“From the fig tree learn its lesson: as soon as its branch becomes tender and it puts out its leaves, you know that summer is near. So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that He is near, at the very gates. Truly I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place. Heaven and Earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.” Mark 13:28-30

I like figs. I like figs so much that a few years ago I planted a fig tree in the garden. Partly bec...

“A man planted a vineyard and put a fence around it and dug a pit for the winepress and built a tower and leased it to tenants, and went to another country. When the season came, he sent a servant to the tenants to get from them some of the fruit of the vineyard. And they took him and beat him and sent him home empty handed. Again he sent them another servant and they struck him on the head and treated him shamefully. And he sent another, and him they killed. And so with many others, some they b...

And he said, “With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable shall we use for it? It is like a grain of mustard seed, which when sown on the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth, yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes larger than all the garden plants and puts out large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in it’s shade.” 

With what can we compare the Kingdom of God? Jesus asks, sounding a bit rhetorical – as though to say “You can’t really com...

Previously I wrote about the parable of the sower, when Jesus tells us about the seeds landing on different types of soil. In that parable the soil represents the four different ways someone can react to Jesus’s teaching. 

Jesus also used two other related stories about sowing seeds which develop the idea a little further, and these are the next two parables I shall write about…

And he said “The Kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground. He sleeps and rises night and ...

He said to them,  Do  you bring in a lamp to put it under a bowl or a bed? Instead,  don’t  you put it on it’s stand? For whatever is hidden is meant to be disclosed, and whatever is concealed is meant to be brought out into the open. If anyone has ears to hear, let them hear.

Consider carefully what you hear, he continued, with the measure you use, it will be measured to you – and even more. Whoever has will be given more, and whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken away from th...

“Listen! A Farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed some fell on along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Some fell on Rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up  quickly, because  the soil was shallow. But when the Sun came up the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. Other seed fell among thorns which grew up and choked the plants, so that they did not bear grain. Still other seed fell on good soil. It came up,  grew  and ...