Beverly and I live on the western edge of a steep ridge. Our backyard is on a mild incline, but before it becomes steep beyond our property line, there is a rock, estimated to be around 500+ pounds
embedded in the ground that I refer to as “North Rock.” The ridgeline runs sorta north and south, by good old boy reckoning. I had blazed
a path down to North Rock so I could visit occasionally and listen to the wind
blowing through the trees when I got a hankering. It is not a place with a wow
factor, per se, because all you can see are trees on a steep slope.
North Rock is where I have the opportunity to join in with the rejoicing of the trees concerning the promise of His coming. Okay, I know that sounds rather strange, going out on a limb here! Trees are analogous to steeples; they point toward heaven. When I am at North Rock, my thoughts are guided upward (Col 3:2). Did you know that even the trees are
waiting on the LORD’s literal return to rule on the earth? Read the words of the Psalmist,
(Psa 96:12) Let the field be joyful, and all that is
in it. Then all the trees of the woods will rejoice before the LORD.
(Psa 96:13) For He is coming, for He is coming to judge
the earth. He shall judge the world with righteousness, And the peoples with
His truth.
This is the ultimate green movement (cf. Rom 8:19-22).
Let me ask you; are you guilty of “…why do
you say nothing about bringing back the king” (2 Sam 19:10)? Is your spirit
knitted with those who have a future expectation of His return (1 Jn 3:2, 3)?
Is your spirit thrilled over the promise, “Yes, I am coming quickly” (Rev
22:20a) that you embrace the words of the Apostle John as your own, “Amen. Come,
Lord Jesus” (Rev 22:20b)? Can you truly say those things without a conditional “but?”
Got more life to live before going home? Don't miss the forest for the trees!
To be sure, I am a lover but not a
hugger of trees. I do think we thoughtlessly remove trees that have endured
for decades, if not longer. It is sad. Someone decides to put up a parking lot, and there
go all the trees regardless of their stature. When I lived in the suburbs of
Atlanta, a developer took down an oak that was every bit twelve feet in
circumference and over a century old; my wingspan is about six feet. This magnificent oak was in the way of nothing after all was said and done! It made me
sick to my gut. Trees not only provide oxygen to our atmosphere, but many provide food and shelter for wildlife. In my opinion, the presence of trees scattered in an asphalt parking softens the harshness of man's so-called progress. My love for trees was my mother's doing!
Anyway, North Rock is a great and
convenient place for me to contemplate the things of this world and the things
above, along with praising His return. The cool thing is that I can walk to it
in less than five minutes. It is never necessary that I have to be in the
woods to meditate on things, but it is there, and why should I not take advantage of it?
Have you ever felt the walls of your
mind closing in on you? I was so narrowly focused one day on negative
thinking that I simply felt the need to step away for a few minutes and talk to
God about some things at North Rock. It has become my Ebenezer (stone of help) of sorts, a rock
of help. I will confess to you that the more I learn of God from His Word, the
more I realize how less like Christ I am. Such a truth humbles me but also
buffets me to no end!
I often experience a Romans 7:24 moment, “O wretched man
that I am…,” but I always walk from the depressing nature of sin to praising my
Redeemer for what He has done for me (Rom 7:24b-25). My soul yearns for
ultimate redemption; how about you? Allow me to share with you something that I
had never observed until I started sitting on North Rock.
Long before North Rock, when I was mowing my parent's yard as a teenager, I had this cooling-off ritual of sitting under the shade of a loosely-knitted group of pine trees and sipping sweet southern tea and listening to the wind caress the pines to a melodic whisper. Beyond their boughs, I watched massive cloud ships sailing across the airy blue ocean carrying precious cargo to thirsty lands. To this day when out in a forest, I still find myself taking the time to listen to the sounds of the trees during the rustling of their leaves blowing in the wind. So, this was nothing out of the ordinary for me when taking a seat on North Rock; it turned out to be a common connecting point for such a time as this.
On this one particular day at North Rock,
the wind was brisk, and the dry and sapless brown leaves, waiting for the
completeness of abscission or the cutting away from the tree, were making such
a clatter. Ever walked across dead leaves in the yard. They are so stiff and brittle
that they make a crunchy sound when you step on them. The myriad of brown
leaves still hanging on to life, rubbing against each other abrasively in the wind on this day would have drowned out
any soft summer peaceful song of the green leaves.
The spring/summer and fall leaves had
their own song. Generally, do not humans have a different song in the
spring/summer days of life than in the fall of life? The brown leaves were not making
a soothing noise by any stretch of the imagination, but rather, it was an edgy
and distractive tone as stiff rubbed against stiff; all that remained was the inevitable
fall to the earth to decay, never aspiring again as a leaf lifted high subjected to the ways of the wind. The grating, inharmonious sounds got my attention while sitting on
North Rock. These would be some of the last sounds; the only kind of sounds
that they would ever make until released to an earthy grave.
For me, it was quite a contrast to the soothing
green leaves of summer as the wind moved in and through the boughs. The summer
leaves were alive, full of sap, flexing with the wind, making sounds that were
delightful and gentle to my ears. It was a remarkable contrast between the song
of the brown leaves before winter’s approach and the song of the green ones during
spring and summer; I have never noticed or thought about the difference in the songs among the
deciduous trees until I came to North Rock to perch!
Unlike a naturalist, evolutionist, transcendentalist,
pantheist, animist, or any other “ist” out there that attempts to explain the
world apart from the Creator God’s point of view, we are intended to see the world
through the lens of Scripture in order to make sense of the world around us. As
believers, we worship the Creator God of nature, not the god in nature, not the god out
of nature, or some anti-God idea about mother nature!
The same short-lived leaf that soothed
my spirit in green was now brown, having the look of death, and it was nothing
more than the sounds of death chimes on a tree. It reminded me of Isaiah 64:6, “But we are all like an unclean thing,
and all our righteousnesses are like filthy rags; we all fade [wilt] as a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, have
taken us away” (emphasis mine).
This verse
is part of a prayer by the remnant of Judah that began back in Isa 63:15.
Interestingly, this prayer, at the time of its writing, comes across as in real-time, but in reality, it would be another 100 years plus after Isaiah penned these words before it actually
took place after the Babylonian Captivity (605-586 B.C.), thus its prophetic
nature. Isaiah’s ministry ran from 739 B.C. to c. 681 B.C. (the year of the death
of an Assyrian King by the name of Sennacherib).
Expositors
divide the prophecies of Isaiah, son of Amoz, into two major divisions:
chapters 1-39 deal with Judah’s situation during the ministry of Isaiah, and
chapters 40-66 address a remnant of Judah being released from 70 years of the Babylonian captivity (Isa 39:5-7; Jer 29:10), yet to take place. MacArthur sees
a further division of chapters 40-66: 40-48, 49-57, 58-66), ending with the
words,
“There is no
peace, says the LORD, “for the wicked” (Isa 48:22; 57:21).
When will we
as believers ever learn, there is no peace of
God (fellowship) when sin is in our lives though we have peace with God (salvation)? Is our lifestyle
as a believer like a brown leaf, lifeless-acting, decaying, making a bunch of
noise that will quickly turn to silence with the cutting away (Heb 9:27)? We
don’t have to turn brown like a natural man who does not have the Holy Spirit. Recall these words of the Psalmist,
(Psa 1:1) Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the path of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful;
(Psa 1:2) But his delight is in the law of the
LORD, and in His law he
meditates day and night.
(Psa 1:3) He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that brings forth its fruit in its season, whose leaf also shall not wither; and whatever he does shall prosper [emphasis
mine].
The
Hebrew word for “wither” (Psa 1:3) is the same Hebrew word translated as “fade” in
Isa 64:6. Staying green means there is no wilting or fading until the rapture
or R.I.P.! We grow older but our spiritual vitality remains stronger than ever (cf. 2 Cor 4:16; Eph 4:23; Col 3:10). The
secret is in Psa 1:1-2; Psa 1:3 is the byproduct of going green! It is self-explanatory, but definitely not a DIY truth; it will take submitting to the Holy Spirit as a lifestyle to
stay green regardless of our age until we are no longer here (Gal 5:16)! <><
Isa 55:12, For
you shall go out with joy, and be led out with peace; the mountains and the hills shall break forth into singing before you, and all the trees of the field shall clap their
hands.
1 Chron 16:33, Then
the trees of the woods shall rejoice before the LORD, for He is coming to judge the earth.
THOT: Evergreen happens
only in glory; staying green in the here and now takes effort.
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