*if you missed Part 1:The Stump go read that first!
We bought a foreclosure, a year ago when the housing market here in CA was still at the bottom. It still is…but in certain areas home prices are starting to rise again. We got a killer deal on a small home with a big backyard…this place is perfect for us. It’s old and falling apart, but my need for granite countertops was thrown out with my pride a long time ago.
With pretty much all foreclosures, the house sat empty for months, we know at least 6 months for sure. 6 months is just enough time for the weeds to grow as tall as our 6 year old and for a beautiful white birch tree to become dry from lack of water, thus allowing disease to spread. When it became sick it wasn’t able to fight it…it was given no attention, no pruning, no water.
That’s all it takes…a lack of water.
I have a very large potted hydrangea. Hydrangeas are beautiful, but they are water suckers. It can’t go more than a couple days without watering before its leaves begin to droop. I planted a new tree just a couple days ago, I’m waiting to see if it survives the transplant…I’m watching the ground carefully…I can’t let it get dry.
Let me break from the metaphor for a moment…isn’t that what we do to ourselves? We feel as if we are in a drought…when actually there is a hose connected to a water spigot just yards away…. What is it about us that can be ok with going dry? We end up thinking that yesterday’s drink of water will get me through the rest of the week, or month or years. I don’t need no stinking water! Then I realize how thirsty I am when drops of His amazing presence falls on me like a light rain and I catch myself crying out for the flood to come.
But before the flood, even before a light drizzle…there are decisions to make.
So now what do we do? A dead and barren thing has been removed…what do we choose to put in its place? No hole can be left empty. It will be filled with something, we can control what goes there…or someone else or something else will. I don’t know about you, but in my life…I don’t want anyone else making those choices for me.
We now laugh about our choice. If you know us, we’re extremely frugal and figured, if we could get a free tree…we would! When the tree was dropped off a couple weeks later, we were in disbelief. It literally looks like a stick, no leaves, a tiny root ball and its hard to imagine that it will grow to one day fill our yard with cool shade.
Looking back, we could have spent some money and bought a larger tree that actually looks like a tree and not just a branch. It would have saved us some years of waiting…and in this day we’re always trying to figure out how to do something quicker and faster right?
Days, weeks, months passed…no leaves. It began to look dark, like the tiny stick was beginning to die. I’m not joking when I say I prayed for our little tree. I prayed it wouldn’t die. We waited and waited. The winter was tough, extremely hard winds came and yet the stick stayed upright. We don’t get snow here, but we sure get wind and rain. During one storm I watched the tree as it swayed, wondering if maybe I should put a garbage can on it to protect it. I was sure it would snap in two if a large enough burst of air came at it.
A couple weeks ago I walked out to our front yard, about to water my plants…and I saw it. Green Leaves. I literally ran to the tree and laughed outloud! I’m sure if our neighbors saw me they would wonder how I get so easily amused. But I was thrilled to say the least! Little green leaves, tiny imitations, almost looking like they belonged in front of a doll house…they turned the stick into a real life giving tree. We had waited for so long, in hoping the birch would come alive, in ripping it out, planting the new tree and waiting to see if it would survive…we finally had growth. What once was dead…has now been replaced with LIFE.
“For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” Romans 6:23
(come back tomorrow for the last installment of this mini Easter series.)
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