Nature Tidbit #1

I am beginning to wonder just how much I am like the sugar maple in my back yard (at least, I'm pretty sure it's a sugar maple). This dry spell we've been having has practically baked it. The leaves are withering from the heat and drought. Here is the worst part: now the leaves are beginning to fall from their branches, just as if it was October rather than August. Even the two nights of torrential rain we had didn't help it. It sucked the water so quickly that it might as well not have rained at all.

It reminds me of Scripture found in the first Psalm:

They are like trees planted along the riverbank,

bearing fruit each season.

Their leaves never wither,

and they prosper in all they do.

 
Psalm 1:2 explains just who verse 3 (above) describes:
 

...[those who] delight in the law of the Lord,

meditating on it day and night.

If I choke the Word out of my life, I will wither. I will thirst. Not only will I not bear fruit, but I will wither. I will be malnourished, shriveled up just like my maple tree. I will be experiencing a time of fall when I could be experiencing a summer.

The good news is that my sugar maple has strong roots. It has that much going for it. I have hope that it will not die. I know that rain is coming. I have strong roots, too, and I know that my season of drought is coming to an end. I just have to keep feeding myself with His Word. I cannot expect two days of Bible reading to transform and renew my entire mind. I have to fix my thoughts on Him, not my circumstances and certainly not myself.

There really are quite a few nature metaphors to be found in Scripture. I wonder if anyone else thinks the way I do when it comes to looking at withering trees and so on. It seems that God chooses to speak to me this way pretty often. Maybe He would speak to us all this way if we would but be still and listen and observe. Perhaps that is one of His many glorious purposes in creating such an indescribably fascinating universe.