Roots

          Several years ago as I was on a misadventure God told me I was going to be a lot closer to Him at the end of this journey. Now at that point I thought He meant just that trip. However, that trip didn't start out well, and ended prematurely with no gas and little money in the middle of a canyon. It turned into a real crisis. The end of this journey He was referring to was not the end of this running away from my life. He brought me back, and I am so thankful that He did.

         This journey is about closeness, but that doesn't mean there will be no wilderness and no battles. Actually what we consider to be pressures and pains and crisis are what cause our heart to either spin out or cling to the one we love. The whole question then is where are we anchored. In the natural I have found a home. In May of last year I moved into my first apartment with zero roomies. It was the first time I had my own space in quite some time. I had a rhodedendron plant that was in a pot. I had purchased it from a nursery and I was carrying it around from 1 residence to the next. I had been told that it would last 3 years in the pot and then it would die if it weren't put in the ground. Six months after I moved into that apartment, it was time for that rhodi to be planted. And God also started to speak to me about putting down roots. I planted that rhodi in the little garden I had in front of my place as well as some other plants.

         Before that I felt like I had no clear place of belonging, but in my heart that brought some firmness to the connections I have with the people around me. For a while all I wanted to do was get out of here, and I almost broke off all relationships. So much blessing that God didn't let me succeed, that would have been so ruinous. If I can't put down roots and deal with whatever deficiencies I may be experiencing I will start smaller somewhere else and encounter other problems that I have no grace for. I will also run right back into me. I have to deal with this at some point, there is no escaping me.

         This closeness that God has been drawing me into and growing me into, I have had previews of it, but now He is growing me into it. And in it He is creating a solidness that has never been part of my being until now. And it comes from the washing of the word, and the eating and drinking of the word and leaning and following the Holy Spirit. Jesus voiced a desire of His heart the night before the cross. They had dinner, Jesus had washed their feet, and had been telling them to love one another the same way that he had just loved them. Judas had disappeared to who knows where, and they went out into the night; in the cool and misty night. You know, crickets chirping back over some hill. They went and they were crossing the Kidron Valley David crossed when fleeing from Jerusalem as his son attempted to stage a coup. There were vineyards and they came to the Mount of Olives. The whole watch and pray scene happened here. And he had been explaining to them abide in me. But at some point during this night so different from the others, Jesus prayed in front of them out loud for the sake of His disciples.(John 17)  He was sharing with them His heart that night more than any other night. This desire that Jesus shared was this, "Father, I want those whom You have given Me to be with Me where I am." At the front of the book of John, the first chapter and second verse it says, "He was with God in the beginning" You can see it through the whole book the relationship Jesus had with the Father is on display. He was showing us how to be with Him. And that is what I want more than ever to be with Him. Jesus, I want to be with you where you are. There is so much in that, ask me about the "with God" thing some time, I'll tell you. Besides natural roots in Salem, I have put down roots in the Spirit. I get to abide in the vine (John 15), I get to be that Psalm 1 tree planted by the waters, and it is about closeness and staying there.