We’ve all been worn down by this year, sometimes devastated in our loss of spiritual presence, emotional regulation, psychological balance, sense of humor. For Jesus, renewal of these resources is contained in another metaphor he uses over and over when he talks about gardeners and their plants. And in a most telling parable, renewal happens only while the gardener is fast asleep. He knows nothing about how it works, can’t make it happen, just shows up day after day making soil ready for the possibility of growth. The gardener has come to terms with his utter dependence on forces he can’t control, and at the mercy of sun, wind, and rain, he finds his own humility and vulnerability, an interior soil now prepared to receive the possibility of grace. As a society, we haven’t been gardeners for a long time, and if we fight this 2020 war of attrition as we typically do—as warriors—we’ve already lost. 2020 is now a state of mind, a metaphor. If you want to leave, change your metaphor. From warriors to gardeners, as we beat our swords into plowshares, we find the resources to outlast any war of attrition.