Speak for the Trees

Jeff and I just returned from a trip to California. It was absolutely perfect.  Zack was able to stay home with Nanny and Grampy and was very well taken care of and totally entertained.  Jeff and I were on our own, well, us and Tim Keller who preached to us for hours in our rented Jeep.  We went to see the Giant Sequoias in Sequoia National Park, King's Canyon National Park and Yosemite.   We saw a bunch of trees, really, really, big amazingly graceful and beautiful trees.  I am not usually the sort of girl to just stare at trees or want to drive 6 hours so we can see them, but this trip was different and these trees were different. These trees are ancient.  They began as saplings when Jesus was getting his feet dirty in a lake side fishing village.  They are over 2,000 years old. They tell a story.

They stand nearly 300 feet tall and have a trunk diameter of up to 40 feet.  The bark on the trees is up to 3 feet thick and filled with tannin to protect them from fire and insects. They are built to survive. They are built to reach to the top of the canopy and collect the sun, their roots reach out as much as 150 feet just 6 feet below the surface to collect as much of the precious rainfall these trees could possible gather in the arid Sierras.  They only grow in a narrow band on the Eastern Side of the Sierra Nevada mountains.  

They are adapted for one purpose, and one place, and there is a surprisingly essential ingredient to their survival that humans nearly snuffed out for 100 years.  Here lies the lesson for our lives.  They need fire to propagate.  They need fire to thrive.  The forest service decided fire was dangerous (a no brainer to most of us) and so they extinguished the natural fires caused by lightning in the forest for nearly 100 years.  Then someone realised that new trees were not growing.  The forest floor had become grown up with white birch trees and debris.  The little seeds would not be able to find a home or compete for sunlight in such a grown up environment.  It was more than that though,  the trees themselves hold their pine cones hundreds of feet above the forest floor. They remain on their branches safe and green, until fire comes.  The heat from the fire causes the cones to dry up and to drop their seeds, millions of them.  These little seeds, about the size and appearance of an oatmeal flake fall from their high perch to a forest floor that is being fertilised by the ashes of the fire.  One forestry worker said the seeds fell like snow covering the forest floor.  Out of that fire will come thousands of saplings, some will make it to become a mature tree in 500 years, others will be choked out and go back to the earth.  But some will end up looking like this:

 

It challenges me to think of fire as being a necessary in life.  

Hebrews 12:29 "Do you see what we’ve got? An unshakable kingdom! And do you see how thankful we must be? Not only thankful, but brimming with worship, deeply reverent before God. For God is not an indifferent bystander. He’s actively cleaning house, torching all that needs to burn, and he won’t quit until it’s all cleansed. God himself is Fire!"

God Himself is a fire.  The presence of God on Israel's journey through the wilderness was marked by fire.  The burning fire pot in Genesis 15 was God's presence.   In Acts, it was tongues of fire that came down on the church to show that the Holy Spirit had come to reside with them and in them.  God himself, the fire.  Fire burns, it purifies, it consumes the dross of our lives, the yucky sinful guck that has long weighed heavy on our hands and hearts. It cuts deep and close and leaves only what is worth having in the first place.  It hurts.  We want to shield ourselves from the close watch of the Holy Spirit's gaze. We want to insulate our hearts from really getting close enough to the hot blazing fire of God's presence. We keep our hearts from the closeness of God so we can hold on to the things that seem safe and comfortable.  

There is a danger in not letting God do continual refinement in our lives.  The Great Trees had to undergo intense fires because the forest was not cleaned out by smaller fires. The fuel for the fires accumulated on the forest floor and even their genetically designed fire resistance was compromised. Some lost the battle to fire, others bear the scares of the fires that did not have to be so hot, if only the fire was allowed to take the course of God's design... a little at a time... only what the trees could bear...   The tree above bears the marks of fire.  Over time, it will heal.

I started this blog thinking the fire in the forest symbolised trials.  My mind is changed. The fire is God.  Many churches have asked the Holy Spirit to not be active in their communities. It just felt so much safer and predictable to run it themselves without the interference of a God who is not so safe.  I am saying today, Lord come and be that consuming fire in the church. Come and clean the dross of our complacency and control freak nature. Come and burn up our pride so that all that remains is your Sweet, Powerful, Awesome Presence, and a church that loves like Jesus, lives like Jesus, knows Jesus.  A church that grows, that shares the gospel, where the seeds of truth just fall from our branches like snow on the world around us.

God you are worth it. You do all things well.