The land flowing
with milk and honey…figs, grapes, and pomegranates. An easy place to have a
feast! Let’s sit at the King’s feet today and feast. This is fall and there is
an abundance of food just waiting for us to harvest and enjoy! Figs are ripe
twice a year—early summer and late summer. The late summer ones are the best
since that is a fresh sweet crop that has grown over the summer. The fig fruit
is actually the flower grown inward, so all the inner crunchiness is part of
that flower, along with the soft sweetness of the outer fruit. What a delectable
creation. God is so creative in the variety of foods He made for us!
Figs have so many nutrients
that they have been used medicinally as well as just for food. Even in Isaiah’s
time figs were used for healing. In those
days King Hezekiah became mortally ill. And Isaiah the prophet the son of Amoz
came to him and said to him, "Thus says the Lord, 'Set your house in
order, for you shall die and not live.'" Then Hezekiah turned his face to
the wall and prayed to the Lord, and said, "Remember now, O Lord, I
beseech You, how I have walked before You in truth and with a whole heart, and
have done what is good in Your sight." And Hezekiah wept bitterly. Then
the word of the Lord came to Isaiah, saying, Go and say to Hezekiah, 'Thus says
the Lord, the God of your father David, "I have heard your prayer, I have
seen your tears; behold, I will add fifteen years to your life. ...Writing of
Hezekiah king of Judah after his illness and recovery: ... O Lord, by these
things men live, And in all these is the life of my spirit; O restore me to
health and let me live! "Lo, for my own welfare I had great bitterness; It
is You who has kept my soul from the pit of nothingness, For You have cast all
my sins behind Your back. ... "It is the living who give thanks to You, as
I do today; A father tells his sons about Your faithfulness. The Lord will
surely save me; So we will play my songs on stringed instruments All the days
of our life at the house of the Lord." Now Isaiah had said, "Let them
take a cake of figs and apply it to the boil that he may recover."
- Isaiah 38:1-5, 9, 16-17, 19-21 NASB I prefer to eat fresh figs rather than
use them externally, but they obviously do have a value for healing. Those figs
gave King Hezekiah an additional fifteen years of life.
Figs must be
harvested when they are ripe. Sunlight and water are very important to their
growth and ripening. If they don’t have enough water the figs will fall off the
tree or become small, hard and inedible. We’re like that, too. If we don’t get enough
water, physically or spiritually, we dry up and get hard. Hard to live with.
Grumpy. We need to have “living water” every day. Jesus is the source of that
living water. Even in the Old Testament living water was mentioned in relation
to the Lord. O Lord, the hope of Israel.
All who forsake You will be put to shame. Those who turn away on earth will be
written down, because they have forsaken the fountain of living water, even the
Lord. Jeremiah 17:13 NASB. Of course
in the New Testament we think of Jesus interaction with the woman at the well
and their discussion of living water. He
who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, 'From his innermost being will flow
rivers of living water.' John 7:38
NASB. I thirst regularly for that living water…and for figs. I certainly don’t
want have my name recorded as one who has abandoned or forsaken the living
Lord. Do you?
Lord, thank you for creating such wonderful,
refreshing and nutritious foods as the fig and for proving Yourself as the
living water.
© 2012 by Mickey M. Hunacek. All rights reserved.
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