Thus says the Lord:
“Cursed is the man who trusts in man And makes flesh his strength,
Whose heart departs from the Lord. For he shall be like a shrub in the desert,
And shall not see when good comes, But shall inhabit the parched places in the wilderness, In a salt land which is not inhabited.
“Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, And whose hope is the Lord.
For he shall be like a tree planted by the waters, Which spreads out its roots by the river, And will not fear when heat comes; But its leaf will be green, And will not be anxious in the year of drought, Nor will cease from yielding fruit.
“The heart is deceitful above all things, And desperately wicked; Who can know it? I, the Lord, search the heart, I test the mind, Even to give every man according to his ways, According to the fruit of his doings.”
I love wood. The gleaming red of Eastern Red Cedar, the dark depths of walnut, the tight grain of oak, the vivid contrasts of poplar with its white, green, black, and red shades of colors, and the black knots embedded in the firm, tight grain of hickory.
I love to study wood grain: flamed maple, birds eye maple, quilted maple.
The grain of a burl.
A slab of undulating, irregular cypress shaped into a coffee table.
A gnarled juniper carved into a statue of a wild pony sniffing in the wind.
The twist of a vine around a curly stick.
The gnarl of diseased wood.
A fungus formed diamond in a diamond willow.
The brush of color from a fungus that has penetrated air dried lumber.
I love wood. It fascinates me.
A tree, a board, a sapling, a log, tongue and groove, shiplap, d-shaped, round, square, exposed beams. Walls, floors, furniture, frames, guitars, walking sticks, a dashboard in a luxury car. I love wood.
David, the Psalmist, must have loved wood. He prepared cedars from Lebanon for its construction. He opens the Psalms describing people as trees. Jeremiah must have loved wood, too. Jeremiah describes people as shrubs and trees, prompting the question, “Are you a shrub or a tree?”
A fleshly person is a shrub. I have seen the endless stretches of mesquite in West Texas. The willow flats of Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming have stretched before me on the bottom land of Jackson Hole, reaching toward Jackson Lake. I have roamed the scraggly brush-covered landscape of a reclaimed surface mine in Eastern Kentucky.
Jeremiah says that a shrub of a person is cursed by God. A spiritual dwarf is one concerned about human strength, means, and methods, proclaiming personal strength while demonstrating weakness. The shrub of a person has a heart of self-trust rather than faith in God, and is consigned to fruitless and uninhabited desert wastelands.
Jeremiah challenges me to be a blessed man and not a cursed one. He tells me that a cursed man is self-reliant and forgets God. His personal growth is stunted, limited, and dwarfed. His narrative is self-centered and narrow in its scope. The cursed one lacks an overarching story of the meaning of life, rather has lived life with a sensual lust, moving from one taste, sound, and feeling to another in an elusive quest for satisfaction, never discerning what is truly good.
A Blessed person is a tree. The North Fork of the Kentucky River is home. The banks of the river are lined with sycamores. In its youth, a sycamore sapling is decorated in a lovely green, brown, and tan camouflage. As it ages, the camouflage of bark peels away, revealing a crown of white in the upper reaches of the tree. Ultimately, the entire tree will be covered in white. In the summer, a sycamore has leaves as big as dinner plates. In the fall, the leaves are golden. In the winter, the white bark of the aged sycamore sparkles like a cascade of diamonds on a frosty morning. Their aging beauty tells a tale of many floods, droughts, winds, and snows.
A tree of a person is one who trusts and hopes in the Lord. On the banks of the river, the tree reaches out and down with a lively and expansive root system that gives it a death-defying confidence in the blast of summer heat. Green leaves and fruit are its symbols of blessing, the consequence of trusting in the Lord.
Both a tree and a shrub have different destinies. Jeremiah said, “The heart is deceitful above all things, And desperately wicked; Who can know it? I, the Lord, search the heart, I test the mind, Even to give every man according to his ways, According to the fruit of his doings.”
God wants you and me to be fruit-bearing, living, growing trees. His eternal judgment and reward is yet to come.
Are you a tree or a shrub?
PRAYER
Dear Lord,
I have seen both the cursed and blessed. The cursed are packaged in prosperity as well as poverty. The cursed have pursued material existence. Sight, sound, touch, taste, and smells have dominated their concerns. Spiritual pursuits have been neglected. The cry of the eternal has been ignored until its whisper can no longer be heard by the self-imposed hearing impairment of the cursed. Dwarfed. Miniaturized. Judged by God as shrubs.
The blessed are the ones who have listened to the bidding of the Eternal. They have judged their own values, worship, relationships, and decisions by what endures after life. They have lived for more than the sensual. Along the way, the blessed often experience great pleasure, but not because they sought it for its own sake. They sought You first. You have added earthly pleasure to their spiritual peace. The blessed live life with one overarching passion, to hear You proclaim: "Well done" over their lives. They live for the eternal. These well-lived lives are not charmed. No, they have the same suffering, sickness, and sorrow that is common to our shared earthly existence. But their response is different. Their response ever reaches upward, hopeful... to know You. Blessed. Rooted. Well-watered. Enduring. Fruitful. Trees.
I want to live among the blessed. Search me. Test me. Transform me. Know me. Make me a tree, not a shrub.
In the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,
Amen.
Trees
by Joyce Kilmer
I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast;
A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
A tree that may in Summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;
Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.
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