Taking Root

I decided to go for a walk through my neighborhood today, and the Lord seemed to be drawing my attention to all the trees around me.  After walking and thinking for a while, I didn't seem to hear anything from God, so I took a different approach.  I keep catching myself trying to figure out interpretations of images on my own, and I know that isn't what the Lord wants me to do.  So when I caught myself trying to conjure up some deep insight as to the significance of trees, I allowed my single train of thought to become a two-way conversation with God instead.  I immediately found the Lord asking me questions, just as Jesus did to His disciples and, interestingly, the same way I did with the kids at camp this summer.  Actually, He only asked me one question: I had been thinking about roots, so He asked me, "What are roots for?"

A tree's roots dig into the soil the tree is planted in and absorbs water and nutrients to feed the tree.  They also serve to anchor the tree in the ground for stability.  However, contrary to the cliché, roots don't actually dig all that deep—they grow outward rather than downward.  But I'm getting ahead of myself.  First off, when I started answering God's question, I noticed something about soil and dirt that led me to think of the song Beautiful Things, by Gungor.  When a tree is planted, it isn't planted in a bed of flowers, where everything is nice and pretty.  In order for a tree to grow properly, it has to be planted in fertile soil, plain old dirt.  There's nothing special about it.  It's just dirt that has been prepared so that the tree can be planted in it.  In the same way, our lives aren't founded on big, exciting moments.  Those things come and go and can even draw our attention away from God, just like flowers can use up the nutrients a tree needs.  Our lives are founded on the continuous stream of everyday living: the ordinary dirt of life.  We find joy and hope in the simple things because we see God in them, and our ability to find joy in the dirt of life enhances our ability to see God in the bigger, flowery moments of life.  But we don't find our satisfaction in the simple things; we find our satisfaction in the goodness of God that is revealed in them.  Yet we hope for the dirt of life because we know that it will result in the growth of our relationship with Christ.

If a tree's roots grew straight down into the ground, the tree probably wouldn't be very stable.  Plus, it wouldn't get the nutrients it needs because most of the necessary nutrients lie close to the surface.  Likewise, if we dig deep into a particular aspect of life, we become hindered from gaining the spiritual nourishment available in all of God's creation.  We focus on that one thing too much and become so attached to it that, if it were eliminated from our lives, we would go down with it.  Instead, we need to learn to not dig our roots deep but to spread our roots wide.  A healthy tree will have roots that span two to four times the diameter of its crown, the distance covered by the visible part of the tree above ground.  For visual reference, the crown of a tree is the size of the shadow created under it at noon, when the sun is directly overhead.  The roots of a healthy tree will spread two to four times that distance, beyond where the shadow reaches.  So a healthy spiritual life is one that can find God in such a wide range of simple things that the person's outward life cannot demonstrate even half of what he is taking in from the Lord.  A healthy spiritual man does not dig his roots deep into one simple thing of life so that he loses his ability to be nourished by it, but rather he spreads his roots wide to gain the most growth from all sources of nourishment.  A man who digs his roots deep shows insecurity and a need to be comfortable.  But a man who spreads his roots wide shows a willingness to step out of his comfort zone and seek the Lord in ways he has never known before so that he can gain the most out of life.  He knows that God is found in all of the simple things of life, not just in what he is comfortable with, so he seeks to find as much of Him as possible.  That way if a single aspect of his life is removed, he is not shaken because he still has plenty of other sources of strength in Christ.

But it doesn't stop there.  A tree does not take root only for its own growth.  If we could examine the thoughts of an animate tree, I believe it would have other living creatures in mind.  A strong, healthy tree is not only stable and immovable, but it also provides shelter, produces fruit, and spreads seeds.  In the same way, a person whose roots are spread wide, not being so attached to one particular thing but finding joy in all things and being content with whatever he is given—this person will not stop at his own spiritual growth but will be determined to do for others what the Lord has done for him.  His strong roots in the Lord will allow him to be an unshakable source of shelter for those in need of hope and comfort.  The growth he finds in prayer and in his study of the Word will give him a foundation from which to bear fruit, actions that demonstrate God's character, which will draw to people to enjoy the sweetness of the fruit and to seek more.  And the joy he finds in the Lord will cause him to desire to see the same results in the lives of others, so he will spread of the seed of God's Word and His love, specifically by bearing fruit.  The seeds of a fruit tree are carried by the fruit it bears, and the seed will not come if fruit is not produced.  Similarly, we must bear fruit in order to effectively spread the seed of the gospel.  And we can find encouragement in this: even if our fruit goes unnoticed by those we intend to reach by our good deeds, the fruit we bear still carries seeds to plant new trees.  So even if our actions may not seem to have had an effect on someone, we can know that somewhere down the road someone will have a lasting impact on that person's life, and the Holy Spirit will take root inside of him.

So let's grow to be strong trees—oaks of righteousness (Isaiah 61:3) planted by streams of water (Psalm 1:3), abiding in Christ and bearing much fruit (John 15:5) to leave a lasting impact (John 15:16) so that all may see and know that we serve the Living God (John 15:8) and that they might see His glory and power and desire to serve and worship Him as well (Isaiah 6:1-8).  Rather than digging our roots deep, let's spread our roots wide so that we can be firmly anchored in Christ and well nourished by His Spirit, allowing us to serve others effectively and adequately give God glory.  And let's seek to grow our roots in the dirt of life rather than in the flowerbeds, because we know that Jesus makes beautiful things out of dust.  The greatest things in life are not those that are very clearly outwardly glorious but rather those that the Lord makes glorious, no matter how unlikely and apparently useless and irredeemable it may seem.  Worship God in the dull, everyday moments, not just in the big, emotional moments, because the majority of life is made of the simple things.  As long as the big moments are the only times we give glory to God, Jesus has no hold on our lives.  But if we learn to devote our everyday life to Him, then our whole being will truly be committed to Him.