Don’t Despise Barren Land

I despised those first, hundreds of years old trees, cut in early spring. We moved here because we loved nature….

Not because we wanted to see developers cut it down.

But a city growing, and prime land, doesn’t appreciate the mother deer and two fawns I saw last year, eating apples from the wild tree, planted in this ancient field.

The bulldozers, and brush-cutters, and chip makers didn’t mourn the squirrels and fluffy-tailed creatures that made this forest their home, when that first tree fell.

 “I wonder what they are going to build there?”

My kids and I commented each time out car came to a stop, between chopped down forest and Target and Costco already established, on the other side.

Oh course, we speculated. A gas stations? Water park? Another mall?

The list went on and on, as if guessing was a game, and perceiving gave some comfort for this inner aching, knowing tall evergreens once gracing this place, have fallen; lifeless, dead….

Yet, open sky lay above that field. Views of mountains peaks with more and more forest falling. Whisping clouds, open heavens, all became visible, when what lie tall and common fell.

I knew I was supposed to write about this open lot, this dying forest, this barren land that lay before my sorrowful eyes….but I wasn’t sure how to form, an article like this.

But then, yesterday, it sealed it. Prayer requests came in like a current, and my heart was bowed low from morning until night, in prayer for people, just like you.

And I think about this forest. I think about the life that was cut short, or had to leave the place it must have known, untouched for decades.

I think about the sadness, or a land that will likely become parking lots and pavement….

And asked God, “What is glorious and perfect about trees once reaching heaven, now bowed low and vertical and seemingly wasted, every one of them?”

Still, can’t our lives be like that? Resistant to change, harboring, keeping, and wanting to maintain what we are used to….instead of asking God, “What’s next”?

We like the comfort of knowing, tomorrow will look similar to today. We ignorantly believe, nothing will be sifted, what we saw yesterday, will perfectly and exactly be in the exact same place, tomorrow.

But I realize, bulldozers come in all shapes and sizes.

They can look like people and circumstances, problems and personal strongholds and that bow our high rising branches lower than expected.

The lie of a familiar life that’s stagnant, can make hearts hard and resilient and insistent on refusing the harvest He has planned for us…

Amidst the pruning, God promises, His grace is sufficient…though our heart aches for removing of what has always been.

And who likes low? Who likes to see what was rooted, taken out by its core? Everything hidden, now exposed and known, vulnerable and dangerously susceptible to the elements?

Yet, how many know, in one day, one hour, our world can turn completely different. What we have known as normal and peaceful can be removed or flipped completely in the opposite or different direction

Yet, we must trust His hand is in it…the easy, but also the painful and hard.

Even when we despise the breaking, the taring, the pulling of everything we once held comfortable and stable.

I hear the grinding, grating, and pushing of the branches through the mulcher….

Though houses could be warmed with these branches. Deer, raccoons, and thousands of tiny animals once made its limbs its protective shelter.

Yet, who am I to stop the process? Who am I to say what’s standing should always remain? What hid us yesterday, must be there still, tomorrow?

I bend low in prayer this morning. Ask God how to pray for so many hurting….reminded of the list of prayer requests from people around the world coming in….

All within a few hours.

And as I see the machines loosed, branches cut, the familiar taken from us, the lesson I got was this….

We must trust He is the God of the soiled and barren land…just as much as the God of the plenty.

Even if we despise it. Even if we like the shelter that keeps us hidden and protected.

To be vulnerable is to live. To be exposed to nothing but His protection, is the walk of faith that gives even fuller harvest, in due season.

I ask God, for His sovereign hand to cover, for the faces requesting prayer, for those in the middle of crisis or transition, knowing….

Bulldozers are all around, taking what is precious.

But then, I see it again. That barren land. The land I once despised.

And I remember how we can’t hide from the flat and wide open, as if God’s eyes can’t see, us alone are in control or protecting.

His hand, our only covering. The shelter of the most High, His wing alone nestling us. Tucked tight in The Rock, our God our only protector.

And I start to see how He has been sovereign. Give thanks for lives almost taken, start praising although the tall branches of people’s peacefulness were pulled right from the ground…

Yet, still, the seed. His seed. Unaffected.

Then, I see that barren land again. And instead of despising it, I start to imagine what He sees of it.

He doesn’t see weakness or hate, barrenness or uselessness, or a place that is empty, with no hope of promise.

I look closer and see it has everything it needs right in it. The seeds. The soil. Tilled and perfectly cultivated for everything He will be planting.

I see the sun reaching deep, warming that stretched out soil. A soil that has no other resources, but Him.

And I grow strong instead of weak. Thankful instead of angry and frustrated.

I bow low and appreciate even the seasons and people I have been praying for that have left or lost everything and have seemingly nothing to offer.

And I realize the cultivated, available one, is the heart God loves. One broken and weak, vulnerable and plant-able. A life, with no resources to offer Him….

Barren…In desperate need of a Savior.

Let’s not be afraid of our barrenness, offer up the fertile soil of our lives as a drink offering, letting Him plant in our lives, what He’s envisioned….not us.