Wait Like a Tree

After a friend asked me to paint a picture of a giant oak tree for her I started noticing trees. And I started thinking about trees. And I started looking at trees.

Trees are pretty wonderful. They all started from a seed, even the really big ones. Then they just grew. Rain and sun helped but mostly it was years that made the huge ones what they are today.

Years of just growing. Years of just being what God created them to be. I know it sounds a little sappy (yes, pun intended) but I never really thought about trees in the perspective of years, decades, and centuries before. With these thoughts in mind, I drove around town one day to find really large trees and wonder how long they had been there just growing and waiting.

In my quest to see giant trees I realized that God wants to take the time to make us into His ultimate design like He has taken His time with trees. He wants us to learn what doesn’t come fast and natural to us. Sin is natural for us (and fast before you realize it.) Godliness takes time. Some of us take longer than others to learn our God brought lessons. I'm glad God is a patient teacher and will pursue us even when we don’t want to pursue Him.

Trees are teaching me to wait. Trees are teaching me to look behind and see what God did with a seed like me and to look to the future to see the tree I will become. I know I’m taking the tree analogy a little too far, but when you just stop and look at trees you get the sense of the Creator and a sense of the created.

Joyce Kilmer Got it right.

Trees

I think that I shall never see

A poem as lovely as a tree… (skip some)

A tree that looks at God all day

And lifts her leafy arms to pray…(skip some)

Poems are made by fools like me

But only God can make a tree.

And looking at God all day and constantly lifting our prayers to Him is a great and glorious thing. Kind of like a tree. We wait and watch and learn and grow.

But they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint. Isaiah 40:31

We can fly and run and walk unlike trees. But we must all wait. Wait for God to grow us into His likeness.

Wait like a tree.