Coursing With Life
The large tree branch bent pitifully long and low to the brown grass below. I sat leaning against the back of our muted floral couch, hands clasped and eyes fixed. I had finally paused for a moment of quiet after a busy, full day. My mind felt like it was humming with a hundred things. But something about the branch made me stare. What was it about that tree? My eyes trailed upward to the smaller branches above, and suddenly it hit me.
They were all limping unnaturally downward. My brow furrowed as I remembered the lightning bolt that had shook the house the week before. "That must be where it hit," I thought.
I--far too quickly--empathized with the weary branch. In a spiritual sense, I feel like my "branches" are hanging low toward the ground, rather upward toward the deep blue sky. Where is the growth, Lord? I ask. Where are the beautiful buds you promised? So gently, so kindly, He reminded me
Our living sometimes looks like dying.
I constantly must "submit [myself] to Christ" (James 4:7) because my flesh is weak, bound by this mortal world. In that submitting, I must die to myself. Whatever fleshly reaction (impatience, anger, worry) dies and God continues to lavish me with abounding grace and love because that's who He is (Ephesians 2:4). I sat there grappling with this truth. Then I took a deep breath and prayed, "God I choose to believe you. Somehow, even though I feel spiritually dry and vulnerable, I trust you."
My eyes took in those awful branches in a whole new way. No longer did I feel like I was one of them--limp and lifeless, but now I saw a promise: that is not, and never can be, me. I am "a tree, planted by streams of water, whose fruit yields in season, whose leaf does not whither..." (Psalm 1:3).
His life courses, pulses through my veins, and by His grace, I am steadily growing upward toward Him "since it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me" (Galatians 2:20).
Celebrate Redeemed and New Life! Happy Easter!
They were all limping unnaturally downward. My brow furrowed as I remembered the lightning bolt that had shook the house the week before. "That must be where it hit," I thought.
I--far too quickly--empathized with the weary branch. In a spiritual sense, I feel like my "branches" are hanging low toward the ground, rather upward toward the deep blue sky. Where is the growth, Lord? I ask. Where are the beautiful buds you promised? So gently, so kindly, He reminded me
Our living sometimes looks like dying.
I constantly must "submit [myself] to Christ" (James 4:7) because my flesh is weak, bound by this mortal world. In that submitting, I must die to myself. Whatever fleshly reaction (impatience, anger, worry) dies and God continues to lavish me with abounding grace and love because that's who He is (Ephesians 2:4). I sat there grappling with this truth. Then I took a deep breath and prayed, "God I choose to believe you. Somehow, even though I feel spiritually dry and vulnerable, I trust you."
My eyes took in those awful branches in a whole new way. No longer did I feel like I was one of them--limp and lifeless, but now I saw a promise: that is not, and never can be, me. I am "a tree, planted by streams of water, whose fruit yields in season, whose leaf does not whither..." (Psalm 1:3).
His life courses, pulses through my veins, and by His grace, I am steadily growing upward toward Him "since it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me" (Galatians 2:20).
Celebrate Redeemed and New Life! Happy Easter!
This was so good! There is true life, abundant life, in the dying! Great thoughts, Love!
ReplyDelete(even without my editing.) *grins innocently and ducks for cover ;)