The Good News Trees
The master and the son walk side by side through the vineyard, admiring the year’s promising signs of an excellent crop. Not only are the grapes the biggest they’ve been in three years but the vines, so are burdened with grapes, they sag in the middle. The fig trees, upon which the grapevines are growing, are heavy with fruit. They are pleased with what they see, for they paid dearly to have this piece of land. Ten years ago the master had bought this piece of land. He had seen it and realized it was exactly what he needed. A vision formed in his wise head. So he bought the field. He spent countless hours working up the land and adding manure and tilling it again and again. His son was with him every waking minute. He too had caught the vision. In the town of Harvest, five miles away was an orphanage. They were overflowing with children and more would come if they could take them. None of these children had fathers. They all were killed fighting for the King of Neverheard. The Kingdom of Neverheard is huge, with millions of citizens. Lots are willing to fight for the king but they all die never knowing what they were fighting for.
This is what the vision of the master and his son was. They wanted to plant trees and vines in this rich soil they had prepared. The fruit from these trees would be sent to the orphanage to help feed the poor children that stayed there. They labored day after day until the day came for the trees to be planted. But it was not going to be that easy.
You see the King of Neverheard was an evil man and he got a twisted, sick pleasure out of seeing men fight and die never knowing what for. And he loved to see their children crying in their homes. He hated the orphanage and anyone who tried to support it. Most of all he hated the master and his son and the vision they had for the city of Harvest. So deep was his hatred for their cause that he sent men from his army to kill the master’s son in an effort to discourage the ongoing work of planting this vineyard. The soldiers captured the son and tortured him beyond belief right in front of the master’s eyes. Then they put him to death in the cruelest way they could think of. In that day it was death by nailing someone to a piece of wood and then standing them upright in a hole. In this hanging position it was very hard to breathe and so they would eventually die.
After the son died the father took him and buried him in the vineyard in memory of his vision that he had for the people of Neverheard. He then took 12 seedlings that the son had started himself and planted them all around the grave. Three days after the son was buried some people who were close by saw a brilliant light that sprang out of the grave and up into the heavens.
Those 12 seedlings that the master planted grew mightily. People to this day cannot explain why but they produce more fruit than any other plant any one had ever seen. And they multiplied too. So fast and great did they grow that the king of Neverheard grew wary of this vineyard. He told his men to do anything they could think of to destroy this vineyard. They tried to burn it and they tried to spray gas over it, but the vineyard only grew larger and larger and produced more and more fruit. There was nothing that the king of Neverheard could do to stop it.
John knew what happened the day that they saw the bright light go up into heaven. The son arose from the dead by the power that the master gave him. You see the master was the creator of all things. He had power over everything, including death. The reason he knew this is because he lived in that town of Harvest and one day he went and picked the Good News fruit off of one of these trees. By every tree that had fruit on them stood the person who had planted the tree. They told him how to eat the Good News fruit. Suddenly John felt supernaturally cleaned. He new that there was no way that he had cleaned himself on the inside. Somehow John knew though that the son was alive and that he was now living inside of him. The only way he could get there was by eating that fruit.
Many other people through out the kingdom of Neverheard starting hearing about this Good News fruit and many people got to try it for themselves. Whenever they would eat the fruit they would quit fighting for the king and would plant their own Good News tree. John remembered when he had planted his own tree. Some years it would bring a lot more fruit than other years. You see the master would daily come by his tree and inspect it. If he saw that there was something wrong with it he would prune it. Sometimes John wouldn’t let him though because it hurt to much. He thought that he knew how to raise his tree good enough. John realized now looking back that the years where he would regularly let the son work on his tree were the years that his tree would bring the most fruit. He still wishes sometimes that it wouldn't be so painful.
What John remembered most of his years of growing his tree was the time when the master came walking by his tree after he had not let him trim his tree for a very long time. He heard the master say to the son that John’s tree was not bearing any fruit anymore and he wondered if they shouldn’t just chop it down. After all why should this tree take up the good fertile ground that it was planted in if it’s not going to give fruit anyway. Why not let a tree grow that is going to produce much fruit for the people of Neverheard. Before John could open his mouth in defense the son begins to beg the father to let him try one more year to get this tree to bear fruit. He said that he would even dig out around the roots and put down some fresh manure for fertilizer. John couldn’t believe it why would the son go to all that extra bother just for his tree. He couldn’t imagine how much extra time that would take. When John told the son that he could do it himself, he said that that was John’s problem. You see the trees will not bear fruit unless the master and the son do the pruning and fertilizing. In fact anything that John did to try and make his tree bear fruit did absolutely nothing. It was only through the work of the master and the son that any of the trees produced fruit. He said that John’s job was to tell the people of Neverheard about the Good News fruit that could make them clean from anything dirty they ever did in their lives.
Well, you know that manure that he put around John’s tree really stank sometimes depending which way the wind blew. And the way he dug around the roots really hurt. It’s hard to explain why but whenever he works on our trees we can feel it. Sometimes it’s really painful but when he's done there is just this feeling of peace that you feel. Kind of like the feeling of watching the snow fall through a window with a warm cup of hot chocolate in your hand.