"As A Tree...."

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Given sufficient time and patience, it’s amazing how a tree can be trained to grow into the most unusual shapes. (For more amazing pictures go to pooktre planted).It takes years for the tree surgeon to bend and graft and coax the tree to grow into the image he has in mind. In like manner, it takes a lifetime for the Great Physician to grow us into a shape that is authentically human and reflective of the divine image within us.

The first Psalm describes a blessed person as “a tree planted by streams of water….” What a marvelous metaphor. A tree must grow down into those underground sources of moisture. Then it can grow up and out.

We also need to grow down into the rich soil of truth. In the words of the first Psalm, “our delight is in the law of the Lord, and on that law we meditate day and night.” Being rooted and grounded in the foundations of our faith is a key to spiritual growth. With such an anchor of conviction we can avoid being “like chaff that the wind blows away.”

If our down reach is downright then our up reach will be upright. We will avoid “walking in the counsel of the wicked, standing in the way of sinners, or sitting in the seat of mockers.” There is a sense in which we can be judged by the people we grow to admire. As a wise man said: “bad company corrupts good morals.”

When our down reach is downright and our up reach is upright then our outreach can be outright. We can extend the branches of our influence into ever widening circles. In walking through a grove of giant redwoods, we were told by a guide that their roots are seldom deeper than six feet. How can six feet of depth support three hundred feet of height and thousands of pounds of weight without toppling over? The guide explained that their root system grows out perhaps a hundred feet in all directions. They entwine themselves on the surface-roots of neighboring trees, which help to stabilize each other.

We were also told that most of the new saplings spring from those roots which reach out close to the surface of the ground. This gives birth to a growing community where everything is interconnected in a complex network of life. A Lone Ranger lifestyle where we ride off to do our own thing in our own way is very unproductive. Its “leaf does wither,” and it does not “yield its fruit in season” (take another look at the first Psalm). As we are woven into the fabric of a community of faith and we reach out to take the hands and touch the hearts of others, we grow “as a tree.”