In recent weeks I’ve been challenged by my reactions to circumstances I’ve been involved with to stop and reflect more completely on the person I am becoming. I always think of these times as reality checks.
Can’t say I’m crazy about doing this kind of work… but can’t deny that the results have value either.
I’m finding it especially interesting that in the Christian cultures created in our church families we’re learning to come together… work together… learn and grow together… for the very purpose of becoming the self or person that God has designed us to be. That seems odd somehow… that togetherness would lead to selfhood…
When I say “self” in this context, I’m not talking about the kind of self that promotes us to the center of a universe we’ve conjured up or that offers privilege and perks to us as king or queen of that universe. I am speaking of “self” as the strong, deeply rooted, and sturdy trees we find beside the streams of water referred to in Psalm 1.
These trees are contained and yet stand side by side. They experience their form of life individually and are shaped by winds and rain and all the elements of their environment… yet, just beyond their own bounds are other trees just as strong and sturdy facing those same winds and rains and storms. They, too, are rooted on the banks of the same stream and experience that same life.
Human Beings, have the added advantage of choice and dialogue and of “becoming” more in some ways than a grand old oak… but the oak has the advantage of a complex system of roots that hold it in its place. Permanence is part of the package… depending on the surrounding soil and nurture.
We choose where or if we’ll “put our roots down.” What wonderful freedoms we’re allowed… but there is a crucial moment for us… in every singular moment of choice. Choice is a blessing… and it can be hardship. We can rush into choices… or decide not to choose and think ourselves somehow unencumbered and more free… until we begin to reap the fruits of our indecision and evasion and procrastination… the shallow, the lack, the not belonging, and stunted growth.
Once a mode of decision-making (or not) is set in our grain, it’s difficult to change. Some would say nearly impossible. There’s a point of no return when there can be no more adjustment and we must simply live with our folly or with the wisdom that we have sought while it was still early.
It would be a merciless system except for one thing… a God whose mercies are new each and every day. Still, we must choose.
I remember the story of the ant and the grasshopper from my elementary school days. I don’t remember which of my teachers brought the story to us… but I wonder how many of that class have given it any further thought since those young, impressionable days. I wonder how we’ve turned out… industrious like the ant and prepared for the approaching winter… or still flitting from blade to blade like the joyous, but uncommitted grasshopper.
The real warmth and comforts of living come in the ways that we learn as we follow Jesus… as we live together, yet become the incredible “self” each of us is designed to be.
The requirements for such a life do not appear especially inviting… work, commitment, responsibility… but a garden doesn’t bloom until it’s been planted and nourished and has weathered whatever comes through its environment. Nothing grows unless roots are put down.
I’m struck with wonder often. I sit by the sea each morning and hear the waves hitting the huge rocks on our shores. I see how the great Live Oak trees are bent and knarled because they’ve yielded to the years of wind and rain and rain and wind. They lean into the wind and it seems that they should’ve been blown away long ago… but it’s the roots going down that hold them steady and brace them day by day. It’s the trees beside them that help buffer the full force of the storms.
Jesus is that root for us… the “vine” He called Himself… and God, Himself, the vinedresser. We face wind and rain in our lives, too… together… within the church families we join and stand side by side with… not because we’re herds and all of one mind… but because we’re becoming like beautiful trees… stately shaped… secure… sure of whose we are and wherever we are going… that we aren’t alone.
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