The Olive Tree - A True Parable

On Fridays, from now until the idea loses its appeal, I will be taking a walk down memory lane, remembering something from the past that either amuses, touches, or teaches me. This will be a regular series, but I won't force myself to stick to it rigidly. Still, most Friday mornings will be devoted to my reminiscing a bit for your (and my posterity's) reading pleasure. I do promise not to turn these offerings into parables every week! Sometimes, we will just laugh together, or even cry a little, and I hope you won't mind joining me.

When I was growing up in Santa Monica, California, our family home had a beautiful olive tree. My sister and I were fascinated by its fruit, which looked appealing but was hard and bitter to the taste. When we asked our mother how long it would take for the delicious morsels to be ready for eating, she smiled and explained to us that it wasn't a question of ripeness. Apparently, the olives needed to be cured before they would taste like our favorite treats on the relish tray at Thanksgiving. Needless to say, we were disappointed, but we were also resourceful.

By the next morning, we had cooked up the best plan two 4 and 6-year-old girls could formulate. Looking back, it seems to me that our minds were as fertile as the ground upon which the tree in question was planted. Of course, we had no idea that processing olives correctly involved either salt or lye, but we definitely got the other ingredient right...water. In our childish imaginations, we came up with the idea that changing those rock-hard olives into the soft ones we were yearning for would take a very special kind of water to get the job done, and the water we chose was toilet water. Only genuine water from the toilet would do the trick, and so we carefully stored a couple of child-sized handfuls of olives at the bottom of our toilet bowl overnight, hoping for good results. When morning came and there was little progress toward softening, we decided to wrap the olives in toilet paper and dry them in the sun. Still no notable results, so we upped the ante and added a final element to our curing. In fact, we spent a couple of hours dropping the olives from our second-story bedroom window, retrieving them, and then repeating the procedure, convinced that this surely would complete the magic formula for our success. When none of it worked, we were crestfallen. We couldn't understand how our brilliant processing plan had failed.

Our naive and ill-fated attempt to perfect these olives without the assistance of someone who understood what was needed reminds me of the equally naive and ill-fated attempts Heavenly Father's children often make to perfect themselves without His assistance and understanding. When our hearts are hard and bitter, His is the only process that will cure us, and His grace is the only agent that will soften sufficiently to make of us the good fruit He desires. His is the divine plan of salvation, and our only success is in following it.

"...I am the way, the truth, and the life: No man cometh unto the Father, but by me" (John 14:6).

©2011 Susan Noyes Anderson