Rooted and Grounded in Love

Happy Friday, friends!

Here's a little encouragement as we start the weekend.  On the worship night at CCU, Dr. Parks gave a devotional message.  She enunciated her words very clearly, and she slowed down as she read from Scripture.  She is from India, so her accent combined with her sincere reverence for God really commanded the attention of the room.

She talked about visiting Muir Woods in California and learning that the huge, towering 300-foot-tall redwood trees have a surprisingly shallow root system (around 6 feet).  Yet they are able to grow strong and tall and withstand all kinds of weather and major storms because their roots are intertwined with all the trees surrounding them.  They all grow close together and depend on each other for nutrients and support, literally interlocking underground and upholding each other... that'll preach!

It's so cool to me when God does things like that - what a fascinating reality, and what a fantastic illustration and metaphor that is for our lives!  That we can't survive this thing alone.  That it is vital to surround ourselves with likeminded Christians and draw strength from each other - to be independent but also interdependent -- standing strong and tall with our own unique space and branches of personal growth and fruitfulness, but staying close to other healthy people, rooted and grounded in God's love and the faith and hope that unite us -- as Isaiah 61 puts it, planted by God for His glory!

Having been to Muir Woods with the fam on vacation several years ago, I could picture those massive trees vividly, and God really used that message to speak to me.  Hopefully I'm not the only one who loves metaphors!  ❤

“When I think of the wisdom and scope of His plan, I fall down on my knees and pray to the Father of all the great family of God - some of them already in heaven and some down here on earth - that out of His glorious, unlimited resources He will give you the mighty inner strengthening of His Holy Spirit.  And I pray that Christ will be more and more at home in your hearts, living within you as you trust in Him.  May your roots go down deep into the soil of God’s marvelous love; and may you be able to feel and understand, as all God’s children should, how long, how wide, how deep, and how high His love really is; and to experience this love for yourselves, though it is so great that you will never see the end of it or fully know or understand it.  And so at last you will be filled up with God Himself.  Now glory be to God, who by His mighty power at work within us is able to do far more than we would ever dare to ask or even dream of — infinitely beyond our highest prayers, desires, thoughts, or hopes.”  ~Ephesians 3:14-20