From My Nature Journal: Root Reliant

(the culprit!)

This week here at church, some workers finally pulled the tall metal stakes stabilizing several cypress trees that had been planted nine years ago when the building was first landscaped. That should be enough stabilization, don’t you think? Not quite. A seemingly lovely twelve-foot tree was on the ground the very next morning after only moderately strong winds, its root ball less than a foot in diameter after all this time. Sure, it was not growing as tall as the others, 
                                      but that might not have clued anyone but a horticulturist.

The beauty and health of a tree depends on the strength of the root.

Injure that foundation and the tree is wounded, impaired, even destroyed. Protect and nourish the root and the tree is benefited, strengthened, blessed. I recall reading of a poignant case in point: in the early going of the National Park system’s ‘tree parks’ (Sequoia, Redwoods, etc.), people would park and camp under the tree canopies, compressing the soil and suffocating the roots. As these trees died, it became clear that they were literally being loved to death.

The beauty and health of a tree depends

on the strength of the root… Lord, sink

your roots into every part of me…

The Bible speaks of the cross of Christ as a tree: He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree (1 Peter 2:12). If that be so, it also must have roots of a sort, roots that must somehow support and build me: Remember that it is not you who supports the root, but the root that supports you (Romans 11:18).

So, Lord, sink the roots of Your holy tree deep into every part of me. Extend its roots…

…into the good soil of my willingness…

…and the precious minerals of my righteousness…

…But also into the sands of my restlessness…

…and the stones of my willfulness…

…even the compost of my sinfulness…

…the crags of my brokenness…

…the clay of my humanness…

…the muck of my earthiness…

…and the mud of my messiness…

…Into the waters of my freshness…

…the loam of my openness…

…and the promise of my fertileness.

                                                                                                           

Send Your roots deep, and find in me place, purpose and welcome.

                                                                                                                        

And the surviving remnant of the house of Judah shall again take root downward and bear fruit upward (2 Kings 19:30).

The root of the righteous yields fruit (Proverbs 12:12).

He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that… we might live for righteousness (1 Peter 2:12).

(not our photography this week!)

~~RGM, April 10, 2015