A Note From Tom: February 24th, 2012
Hey, everyone!
Just wondering if you’re seein’ what I’m seein’?
Daffodils!
I knew by faith that they would be peeping through and…I was right! Hey, everyone! it’s almost spring!!
Guess winds like we’ve been having over the last coupla days come with nearly-spring! And here’s the rest of your local forecast…” There's a chance for a some snow flurries (what!?) early Saturday morning. Otherwise, skies will clear out with sunshine returning along with dry weather conditions. Highs will be cold in the upper 40s Saturday, then back into the middle 50s on Sunday with lots of sunshine!
If the wind keeps blowing really hard, there’s a big tall cedar tree leaning out across the road near us that might just decide it’s time to end it all.
One year a while back, on a Saturday morning in March, at 2:13 am, a huge branch…’bout twice as thick as a telephone pole…broke off a tree in our yard and SLAMMED! to the earth! Barely missed the house but totally took out the dog fence (smashed it flat!) and we had to capture a furry escapee...
I knew it was 2:13 ‘cause when it started to crack, break, and fall, it was such a weird sound that we just woke up! I looked over at the clock right as it turned from 2:12…then WHAM!! 2:13!!
That tree didn’t even care that it woke up people and freed dogs! Because…
...trees don’t have feelings!
I was just thinking about this, because this morning I was reading a kinda “different” story in Mark 8 about a blind guy that Jesus healed. But it took two “doses” of His healing power! At the first touch, the dude said he could see but people looked like “trees walking around”. They were people, f’r sure, but they seemed to have bark ‘n branches! Jesus gave him another touch and he saw everything perfectly.
Hard to know exactly why Jesus used the two-step approach. It couldn’t be because Jesus “missed” the first time! He could do whatever perfectly with just a word!
It might be because there were folks who were beginning to “see” and understand Him for the first time…but maybe some saw Him “like a tree walking around”. Maybe they thought He was like other people they had known. Unmoved and unfeeling.
Like trees.
But then you get to know Him better and you find He’s like no one you’ve ever known!
John wrote, “How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God!” (1 John 3.1) The phrase “how great” translates a Greek word that comes from two words together- the word for “from where” and the word “country”…The love of God! What country does it come from? It’s like nothing we’ve ever known around here! As we used to say, back in the day, it’s “out of this world!”
But if Jesus WERE like a tree, He would be like the apple tree of love in the Song of Songs! A young woman in love said about the one she loves…
“an apple tree among the trees of the forest is my lover among the young men.. I delight to sit in his shade, and his fruit is sweet to my taste. He has taken me to the banquet hall, and his banner over me is love.” (Song of Songs 2. 3-4) His fruit is good and sweet and she doesn’t have to climb to get it! She just sits in his shade and there it is!
Just like Jesus!
I don’t have to do anything to get Him to love me! He just does! I just sit with Him and His sweet goodness falls on me!
One of my favorite pastors of all human history, a Brit named Charles Spurgeon preached one time about “Jesus, the apple tree” in his London church...
“Now, at this time I want you to think of Jesus…as an apple tree; and when this is done, I ask you to sit down under His shadow. It is not much to do. Any child, when it is hot, can sit down in the shade.
… any simpleton can eat apples when they are ripe upon the tree. Come and take Christ, then… come to the common woods and to the common apple tree where poor saints are shaded and fed. … May the Lord Himself bring forth His own sweet fruit to you! Amen.”
In fact, now that I think about it, there’s a beeeaaautiful old New England hymn that says Jesus Christ IS that apple tree!
Listen to these words…
The tree of life my soul hath seen,
Laden with fruit and always green:
The trees of nature fruitless be
Compared with Christ the apple tree.
His beauty doth all things excel:
By faith I know, but ne'er can tell
The glory which I now can see
In Jesus Christ the apple tree.
For happiness I long have sought,
And pleasure dearly I have bought:
I missed of all; but now I see
'Tis found in Christ the apple tree.
I'm weary with my former toil,
Here I will sit and rest awhile:
Under the shadow I will be,
Of Jesus Christ the apple tree.
This fruit doth make my soul to thrive,
It keeps my dying faith alive;
Which makes my soul in haste to be
With Jesus Christ the apple tree
Soooo cool.
Daffodils…apple trees…Happy “Almost Spring!”, everyone!