Lent is a time full of opportunities and possibilities. More than any other time of the year we are urged to reflect on our spiritual lives, to clean house, to repair and rebuild. The story of the fig tree is a wonderful representation of this time in our liturgical calendar. While the owner of the orchard is convicted to cut it down when it continues to bear no fruit the gardener has a more cultivating heart.  Leave it here for this year, he urges and I shall cultivate the ground around it and fertilize it: it may bear fruit in the future. We all could use a good gardener in our lives. Someone that pours into our lives, fertilizes us with wise counsel and a merciful heart.  Lent is this time of cultivating. We need to take this opportunity to seek out ways to enrich our soil so we too can bear fruit in the future.