When something tragic happens, we look for a reason.  We begin to examine our lives, inspecting our recent behavior, our eating or drinking habits, or the language we use, desperately searching for some reason to explain what has happened in our lives.  It occurs to me when I find myself in such a situation that what I really want is control over the chaos of life.  If I could figure out what I did to cause things to go berserk, I could change it, and the chaos, with its attendant pain, would go away.

When Jesus is asked about these things, about why bad things happen to good people, he doesn’t offer platitudes—he tells a story, a story about a fig tree.  We will read that parable on Sunday morning and see if it helps us make sense of things.