For roots that can stand any winter, push deeper

Mowing The Three and tending the lawn, duties which fall to my males. Hadn’t there been happy hours in this yard? And hadn’t there been mighty chases? Oh, yes. Yes and yes to the playing and fun, to parties every Fourth of July. Kaboom!

Using bicycles and a mower, all shiny and orange, those boys, they’d gone chasing and shouting. ‘Round barn, circling garden with pedal mashed flat, four hooligans had used every inch. Kaboom!

Turning in, my eyes light on sunshine’s bright splash; on cheer colored yellow ‘neath tree. At the tips of bare branches stripped naked and plain, divine Fingers are knitting pink buds.

End of winter. Spring’s return, and life, lying dormant. “Roots, deeper,” all play through my mind. Heart’s listening to the message of storms, and of spring. Of beginnings and endings and testings.

They’d stood right up in the front of the room and presented their need to the Body. “In the past,” said the husband, standing tall, standing strong, “God’s pushed our roots deep, very deep.” A bad accident for him, grievous theft from his business. And lately, a bad accident for his family. They survived.

We’re listening. What a story, the things that they’ve lived. Then this, “God is doing it again. He’s pushing our roots way down deeper. It’s cancer.”

Roots deep. Being pushed. She’s a mother.

I’m thinking on the tree out there in my yard. How winter came, stripping its branches. How the color, it left when the cold came, and storms. I’m remembering its death-look; grey, barren.

But I’m thinking this, too, how the spring brings the life-buds. Brings color. Brings happiness. Brings rain. How life never left; it just looked like it did, and the mad storms of winter couldn’t break it.Roots holding…

So our roots hold, too, through the storm times of winters. In monsoons, in tsunamis, we strengthen. Yes, we strengthen. We stand. Our roots push down deeper. Then spring comes, and color and fruit. Kaboom!

Please pray, if you will, for a mother named Jen with five children (a freshman and friend of my own freshman kid, down to her own Little Buddy in first grade–just like mine). They’re all trusting Him for the strengthening, pushing deeper.