Too much growth can kill you

We have four apple trees in our backyard. Years ago they produced a bounty of red, but this year I can count the number of apples on one hand. At least this year there ARE a few apples. We didn't know anything about apple trees when we moved here, and so we didn't know about pruning. When we did finally prune the trees, we cut them back too far, and I feared we had killed them. They didn't bear fruit after that. So I quit pruning them altogether.

This year the trees grew with a vengeance, and in the spring the branches were laden with promising white flowers. But the apples never came. And when I looked through the tangle of branches to the center of the trunk, I saw that the trees were dying inside. While the outside of the tree was heavy with green growth, the center was becoming brown and dead, and the branches couldn't get the food they needed.

I see now why pruning is necessary. I let the trees have too much of a good thing, and now there are so many branches that the center of the tree cannot get the light or nourishment it needs. With all those branches to feed, bearing fruit is almost impossible. I must prune the trees regularly and make sure I cut away just enough but not too much. And sometimes that means cutting away the good branches to let the light in. Too many good branches means not enough fruit.

I am amazed at how God keeps using those trees to show me my life. This time last year I was emerging from a season of craziness and chaos and too-much-ness, and I spent 31 days writing about abiding. That was a season of pruning followed by so much growth. And yet now here I am again, emerging from another summer just like the previous one, with so many branches I am trying to feed that I sometimes feel like I am dying in the center. I can take on so many things and make it look from the outside that I am thriving, but at my core I am starved for sunlight. And I don't have what it takes to truly bear fruit. 

Thank goodness for a Gardner who knows just what to do when the tree will let Him. Sometimes the pruning is the cutting away of dead things. But sometimes the pruning is cutting back the tangled mess of growth to allow the good things to thrive. To keep me from choking and dying from the inside out. 

And we have the choice to come to Him or not, because we are more than just trees; we are His beloved. I find myself back at this lesson on abiding all over again, and that's OK, because I want to remember how to rest. How to be still. How to be filled with His love instead of with my own drive to constantly do, to find my significance in things that only choke the life away. 

I can rest because I can believe. 

He is good. Always. And coming back to Him always reminds me that I am right where I want to be. I just have to stay there.

How to die, part 1

"Unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much grain. He who loves his life will lose it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life" (John 12:24-25).

The thing is, we're all dying.

We started dying the minute we were born. Ironic. We come into this world taking these gasping breaths, clinging to this slender branch, instinctively wanting to live.

But we're born into a dying world, and we've no choice but to be part of it. Even as we grow and live, we know we're doomed. We've been given passage on a sinking ship.

It seems like we spend most of our life denying death, running from it, fortifying ourselves against it, warding it off at all costs. Makes sense. We were created to live, after all. And death is suffering, and suffering is pain.

But in spite of all our efforts, pain is just the way things are. It's not the way things were supposed to be. But there it is. The God who loves us, He had to allow for the possibility of pain if we were to choose to love Him back. And so we made a wreck of things, rent this gaping hole in our existence through which death comes grinning.

Each day we die little deaths that only remind us of what is coming. 

Or maybe the little deaths are the hardest to bear. We don't mind dying in the end (knowing where we are going), but we want the passage there to be smooth and comfortable. We can't stand the losses and the hurts and the goodbyes and the hopes shattered. We long for certainty and safety. 

So we patch and paste and cover and mend, only to end up tearing bigger holes in this flimsy fabric of life.

But what if we die to live? What if we stop denying death and instead step boldly into it? 

We were made to live. But the life that is waiting for us lies through this passage of death. After all, we are all dying already. It's how we die that matters.

How we die determines how we live, not the other way around. 

And so Jesus comes to show us how these little deaths are seeds falling into the earth, smothered in black darkness for a time. But seeds that die in Him, these seeds live again. They grow up strong. Fruit-laden. Full of life. 

It seems absurd to think of a seed clinging to the branch past its time, trying its hardest to keep on living. And what if it does succeed? A seed that never dies must ultimately lead a withered, lonely life. 

We spend a lot of time being afraid of death. Maybe it's time to look death in the face, to determine how we are going to die. Maybe those little deaths--that really aren't so little after all--maybe they are seeds lying in the darkness of a long winter. 

But maybe spring is waiting. And maybe this death is about to sprout up into glorious life. 

He is there in the darkness. And when we are in Him, we never die alone. 

Awake, soul

I stand on the trail under a sky so blue it could break my heart. It hovers above me with such profundity, the canvas of eternity. The mountains seem to hurl themselves deliberately into it, demanding attention: Look how beautiful I am! Below my ledge of earth the river laughs cold and clear, catching the weight of glory pressing down and throwing it back again, sparkling into the air. The earth shimmers this day. I can feel it worship.

I was not prepared for this. I pull out my heart-list of complaints, the shadow-burdens I have been collecting all week. I try to tell God my miseries, make Him understand the bitterness I feel. My words fall flat, pushed back into my soul like a song sung against the wind. Even my tears feel false and forced, and insult to the day.

I pray. Oh, to feel Your arms around me. To dance in Your presence. To know Your joy.

Do you really mean it? the river seems to say. The mountains grin at me. I am missing the joke.

I give up. At the coffee shop, I plug in my headphones, open my Bible.

The weight of all that worship out there presses down on me as the words pour into my ears:

Oh God, let Your fire fall down 

Let it fall, let it fall 

We welcome You with praise 

We welcome You with praise 

Almighty God of love 

Be welcome in this place 

Let every heart adore 

Let every soul awake… (Chris Tomlin/Passion, Here With You, 2011)

And the earth cries out to me even as it cries up to Him, yearning upward toward the love that reaches down with the holy joy that says, Nothing else matters. Only this. This love, this moment when you stop and listen and let Me love you.

Let your heart adore.

Let your soul awake.

And God takes my bitter-list and gives me a new one:

Bless the Lord, O my soul; and all that is within me, bless His holy name! Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits:Who forgives all your iniquities,Who heals all your diseases,Who redeems your life from destruction,Who crowns you with lovingkindness and tender mercies,Who satisfies your mouth with good things,So that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s. (Ps. 103:1-5)

Forgiven, healed, redeemed, crowned, satisfied.

And oh, can’t you let go of yourself for once and fling yourself into this day of praise, forget yourself in the crushing wondrous holy joy of Him?

I smile. My heart does a little jig. I don’t understand why I suddenly feel so happy. So loved. But that’s the glory of this love that surpasses comprehension. Inexplicably, I know I am His.

More importantly, I know He Is. All of Him. All of it is true: all the power, all the promise, all the raging, pulsing, heart-shattering glorious love.

Bless the Lord, O my soul…

{From the archives...}

Day 11 of Abide: 31 Days of Resting in Him

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