Rory McIlroy, Tom Cruise, and the power of persistence

Yesterday’s final round at the Masters was the most emotional round of golf I have ever witnessed. Rory McIlroy won, becoming only the sixth man ever to win all four majors (the “career grand slam”). He did so despite opening the round with a double bogey, hitting his ball into the water on thirteen, and missing a five-foot putt on eighteen that would have won the tournament. When he sank his birdie putt on the first playoff hole to win, he collapsed to the ground in tears and relief.

Afterward, he told his four-year-old daughter, Poppy, “Never give up on your dreams. Never, ever give up on your dreams.”

Tom Cruise would agree. The actor is known for his death-defying films; in his next Mission Impossible installment, he hangs from an upside-down biplane among other stunts that his fellow actor Simon Pegg calls “absolutely bananas.”

Now we know how Cruise does it. Co-star Hailey Atwell told Variety that he helped her battle her anxieties: “If you are scared of something, just keep looking at it. Just try not to close your eyes or turn away. Just keep looking at it and it will often give you information about what to do to overcome it.”

McIlroy and Cruise illustrate the power of persistence. But what do we do when our dreams and fears require a power beyond human agency?

At least thirty-four people were killed yesterday in a Russian missile strike on the Ukrainian city of Sumy during Palm Sunday celebrations. The Dominican government has released a report on the deadly roof collapse at a packed nightclub that left at least 221 people dead. Bird flu is becoming a “forever war,” while scientists worry that mpox could become the next pandemic.

Staring at such dangers will not teach us how to respond to them.

What will?

“It was not the season for figs”

Today is Monday of Holy Week. On this day:

When they came from Bethany, [Jesus] was hungry. And seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to see if he could find anything on it. When he came to it, he found nothing but leaves, for it was not the season for figs. And he said to it, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again.” And his disciples heard it (Mark 11:12–14).

Matthew adds that when Jesus spoke these words, “The fig tree withered at once” (Matthew 21:19). Why did Jesus curse a fig tree for not bearing figs when “it was not the season for figs”?

The fig harvest in Israel occurs from mid-August to mid-October. However, fig trees then sprout buds that remain undeveloped during the winter. In March and April, these buds grow into small green knobs known in Hebrew as paggim. They have not yet ripened into mature summer figs, but they can be eaten. Leaf buds then sprout as well, usually in April.

Since the fig tree in our text was “in leaf,” it should have had paggim, but it had “nothing but leaves.”

My greatest personal fear

The prophets often likened God’s judgment on faithless Israel to such a tree. The Lord warned, “I will make them like vile figs that are so rotten they cannot be eaten” (Jeremiah 29:17; cf. Isaiah 34:4; Hosea 2:12; Joel 1:7; Micah 7:1). John the Baptist similarly warned, “Every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire” (Matthew 3:10).

So Jesus used a fruitless fig tree as a teachable moment to make this point: Like a fruit tree, God’s people are evaluated by the degree to which we bear fruit. This fact prompts me to ask: How can I bear the fruit God expects of me?

My greatest personal fear, next to the health and welfare of my family, is that I could be wasting this life God has entrusted to me. I very much do not want to stand before the Lord one day and hear him say that I did not do what he intended me to do. If my work does not produce the “fruit” he wanted, the ministry opportunities he so graciously gave me will have been for naught.

Rory McIlroy’s advice is not helpful here: How can I “never give up on my dreams” if I’m not sure what they should be? Nor does Tom Cruise’s advice help: staring at this fear will not tell me how to solve it.

But Jesus will.

“He it is that bears much fruit”

Three days past the cursing of the fruitless fig tree, our Lord told us how to avoid the same fate: “I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5).

His first followers took him at his word. “With one accord” they were “devoting themselves to prayer” (Acts 1:14), and they were “filled with the Holy Spirit” and began to witness in other languages (Acts 2:4). They “devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers” (v. 42), and “the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved” (v. 47).

Everything Jesus did during his earthly ministry, they did as they continued that ministry. He taught multitudes; so did they (Acts 5:42; 6:7). He witnessed to the Sanhedrin; so did they (Acts 4:5–22; 5:17–42). He healed the sick and raised the dead; God worked through them to do the same (Acts 3:1–10; 9:36–42).

Then they began to do what no one person, not even the incarnate Son of God, could do in a single body. Peter shared the gospel with the Jews as Paul did with the Gentiles (Galatians 2:7). He took God’s word west into Macedonia (Acts 16) and eventually to Rome (Acts 28:17–31). Others took the gospel as far south as Ethiopia (Acts 8:26–39) and, according to reliable early tradition, as far east as India and beyond.

Because they “abided” in Christ, they bore fruit that is still transforming the world today.

“The branch of the vine does not worry”

So the key question on Monday of Holy Week is this: Are you “abiding” in Christ?

The great missionary Hudson Taylor told us how:

“The branch of the vine does not worry, and toil, and rush here to seek for sunshine, and there to find rain. No; it rests in union and communion with the vine; and at the right time, and in the right way, is the right fruit found on it. Let us so abide in the Lord Jesus.”

This Holy Week, how intentionally will you rest “in union and communion” with Jesus?

Quote for the day:

“The thing for us to do is to pray without ceasing; once having come into the presence of God, never to leave it; to abide in his presence and to live, steadily, unbrokenly, continuously, in the midst of whatever distractions or trials, with and in him. God grant such a life to every one of us!” —B. B. Warfield

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