Fig Leaves of Imagination: Returning to the Gift of Life

“But you’ve never met me, how do you know anything about me?”

This was Nathanael’s second question. 

His first was to Philip who told him they had found the One of whom the scriptures and prophets had foretold would come, and he was from a town called Nazareth. How quickly Philip had forgotten the One had found him first. Nathaniel’s second question asked how anything good could come from Nazareth.

Do you also question how good can come from certain places thought of as not good?

When we speak of places like towns, cities, and names of people, we are speaking of that which is designed to point to the eternal places of experienced meaning. I write to point you to your own eternal places, that is, your deepest questions and desire for meaning. As Philip told Nathanael to “come and see”, we are invited to do the same. To follow and see where meaning is found, and to uncover, what has already been found in us.

There is always One who finds us before we find the One.

As Nathanael joined Philip and approached the One, the One said to him.

“Look, here is an honest one, with no hidden motive, a true son of Israel.”

A chip off the old block. An honest one connected to the One. This is someone connected to the Eternal in a naked way, with no coverings, and no hidden shame. A branch that had sprouted to live in the gift of Life.

Even Nathanael’s questions did not cover what he didn’t know on the outside, but would lead to what he did know on the inside. Like words that actually mean something.

So when Nathanael asked how this One knew him, the One responded:

“I knew you since you were in the cradle. Before Philip found you, I had already found you under the cover of a fig tree.”

The Life already within Nathanel burst forth saying,

“You are the One indeed!”

So what good can come from Nazareth? What good can come from your own life?

The town Nazareth means “To sprout” or “to spring up with life.” The good was already coming from Nathanael's Nazareth within, where it can be found in you.

Nathanael means “Gift of God” or “God has given.”

Even the covering from the sun under the fig tree could not shadow the reality of the Son standing outside him, speaking from within him.

At this point the One joyfully says to Nathaniel,

“Are you amazed that I saw you from the past into the future, the now present? You don’t just believe because I saw you under a fig tree, you believe because you have not hidden yourself from God. You will see greater things than this. I assure you of an Eternal Truth, the Gift of Life springing forth from your heart eyes will see God is everywhere you thought He wasn’t.”

The One was referencing an experience Jacob had where he saw a ladder with messengers of God ascending and descending upon humans. Jacobs own realization caused these words to spring forth from within:

“Now I see God was here the whole time and I didn’t even know it!”

So what is it that covers our awareness of God? What is it that hides eternal meaning from us?

It is the covering of our true essence with the figments of our imagination, namely, the figments of fear, shame, or ignorance that hides who God really is and who we really are.

Fig Leaves & Figments of Imagination

“Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.” - Gen 3:7

Notice, God did not make the coverings. They made coverings for themselves.

The old, but not the oldest story, of our origins finds our original parents eventually covering their awareness of God with fig leaves. Once they decided nothing good could come from Nazareth, from that deepest place of meaning within them, they ate the fruit of blindness in thinking knowing good or evil would make them like the One in whose image they were already made in. Their eyes were “opened”, which was really a closing of the heart eyes that could no longer see what was Real. They were left trying to see God through the figments of their now covered imagination. They now relied on outer vision to make sense of their deepest longings. Essentially, they covered that glorious nakedness that now would think of God through false imaging.

This was not good.

They had exchanged Nathanael's meaning, the Gift of Life, for thinking life was no longer a gift, that it had to be found outside themselves and on their own. Have you been looking in the same places? Have you asked what good can come from Nazareth, from your own life?

This running to and fro searching for life and meaning caused them to hide. What figment of imagination to think you could hide from God or that God would hide from you? What figment to think life was not freely given? What figment to believe God was angry, mean, or evil, or that God was no longer there or distant?

Here is an Eternal Truth. You will see. It’s just a matter of when.

The One always comes to find us. To seek and save that which is lost in its own imagination. The One who continuously seeks to return us to God’s original imagination in knowing who we are and how good God actually is. 

The One who says to us and to all:

“I knew you since you were in the cradle. I knew you before you were in a mother’s womb. I knew you before the foundations of the world were made. I know you behind your fig leaves. I know who you really are and who you really are is good.”

All other illusions will be thrown into the fire. The fig leaves and trees of knowledge of good and evil go into the fire, and only one eternal truth will make it through: Love Never Fails.

Therefore all of life lived in the illusion that God is not here, or there, or with us, is continually in a refining process of growing up into what is Real, until we return to who God actually is and who we really are. All failure to recognize Love is the only thing that lasts and remains is for our education. God deals with our figmented thinking to return us to our being. 

“So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as other humans do, in the futility of their thinking. They are darkened in their understanding and alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardness of their hearts, the closing of their spiritual eyes within, and the addiction of searching for life through the outer senses.” - Ephesians 4:17-18

We are invited to surrender the futility of thinking anything can separate us from God, which otherwise hides us from Reality and leaves us believing God is not here, or there. Futile thinking leaves us hiding behind leaves. We are awakening to the life springing forth from within, previously damned up by seeing through the figments of our imagination of who we think God is and is not. We are returning to the life of God’s free gift of being, of remembering the only One by which we live, move, and have being. (Acts 17:28)

Let us leave the fig leaves of our imagination. Let us leave the shame and fear of thinking we know God is not good, or that nothing good can come from Nazareth, or that life is not a gift, or that all failures are not redeemed, so we can see God is with us, ascending and descending upon us with no broken connection to our lives.  

Let us return to where we really are. 

Then, not even the shade of the fig tree can prevent us from being amazed at the One who was and is, for God is in THIS place, in you, even when you didn’t know it. 

When we no longer make coverings for ourselves, we see the gift of Life was always underneath, tearing the veils we have made for ourselves. Now then, we are naked and unashamed, again.

Spring forth! 

-PH

His name Immanuel means: “God is with us.”

“Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds us all together in perfect harmony.”- Colossians 3:14

God is with us. We have been clothed in Love. There is no longer a reason to hide.

(Opening References: John 1:43-51, Genesis 28:15-17)