It turns out that idolatry is at its heart a problem of patience. That is the insight I learned from another French philosopher, this time a contemporary who lived nearly four centuries after Pascal. In his lectures on hospitality, Jacques Derrida, no doubt puffing on his famous pipe, spoke to a group of students gathered in a Parisian lecture hall. He said this: “Not knowing how to wait is idolatry, it is to produce from oneself what one wants to allow to come.”

The new trees are in. The grounds look beautiful. And this Sunday's parable asks an uncomfortable question: when you've worked this hard on something, how do you remember it isn't yours?