Waves crashing relentlessly, eroding the ground beneath you…you wonder how much more you can take before you topple.
When my husband and I parked our motorcycle in Presque Isle Park in Marquette, Michigan, I immediately spotted this tree. The poor thing. How is it still standing? And then I thought of all we cannot see. Imagine the roots that aren’t visible, the ones that reach deep down, snaking underground, wrapping around boulders, securing the tree with tethers that plunge as deep as the tree is high. In truth, this tree may have deeper, stronger roots BECAUSE of the wind and the waves.
Do you, like me, forget about your unseen roots when the waves rise high?
I’m not sure I’ve ever had an actual vision, but there are times when an image is impressed on me so vividly that I have no question it’s from God. Six years ago I was on a prayer walk with a group from my church. We split up and I was walking along a residential street, praying for the people who lived in each house. Without warning, I suddenly had a visual impression that I was sitting at the top of a roller coaster. Jesus was beside me. He said, “You are going to experience the sensation of fear, but I built the roller coaster, I fastened your seat belt, and I am right beside you.” I had no idea what it meant…until a few days later when I answered the phone and my daughter-in-law sobbed, “Scott is in liver failure.”
It wasn’t the first time my oldest son had been hospitalized for his chronic liver disease, but never had we heard these words. My youngest son offered to go with me and we made the six-hour drive to St. Louis, not knowing what we’d hear when we got there. The whole way, though afraid, I had the strange and unexplainable peace only God can give. To see my son in a hospital bed, skin yellow with jaundice, was terrifying. But, just as I’d been told, it was the “sensation of fear.” The doctors operated, and Scott recovered. He has been hospitalized several times since then, once even more frightening, but each time I remember those words that prepared me. I remember my roots…the absolute knowledge that God is there in the midst of the storm, that he is the bedrock, and the faith he has given me are the roots that sink deep into Him. Though I will experience the sensation fear, he is holding me tight.
I love this passage from Ephesians 3: “For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”
Are you feeling wave-battered? What are you doing to sink your roots deep, or how are you reminding yourself that you are rooted and grounded in the One Who is LOVE? If you’re struggling, be honest…hearing stories from those who have been in a similar storm may encourage you.