Returning empty-handed?

If anyone says to you, ‘Why are you doing this?’ say, ‘The Lord needs it… (Mark 11:3)

The next day when they went out from Bethany, he was hungry. Seeing in the distance a fig tree with leaves, he went to find out if there was anything on it. When he came to it, he found nothing but leaves. (Mark 11:12-13)

I don’t know that I’ve ever connected these two verses before. In both cases, the Lord needs something.

But in the first he receives what he asks, and in the second, he doesn’t.

It just made me think. “When the Lord needs something of me, how often does he come away empty-handed?”

Lord Jesus, may you never return empty-handed when approaching me for fruit.