Look to the Trees!

Dealing with transition can be difficult.  It can be down-right painful.  Whether you are being asked to resign from the CEO position of a Fortune 500™ company or being told your hours are being cut, the life of comfort and familiarity you have grown to know and love is now gone.

You have decisions to make.  And you have to make them fast.  Should you move out of your house?  Will you find a new job before you run out of savings?  How are you going to explain this to the kids?  What will your friends think?  Should you cancel the family vacation?  Oh, and then there’s Christmas!

And as your mind begins to fill with doubt and uncertainty, you turn to God and ask, “Why Lord, why me?”

Job knew this question well.  Job speaks of life’s woes in Job 14:1-6—

“Man that is born of a woman is of few days and full of trouble. He cometh forth like a flower, and is cut down: he fleeth also as a shadow, and continueth not.  And doth thou open thine eyes upon such an one, and bringest me into judgment with thee?  Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? not one.  Seeing his days are determined, the number of his months are with thee, thou hast appointed his bounds that he cannot pass; Turn from him, that he may rest, till he shall accomplish, as an hireling, his day.”

You have had your day in the sun.  And just like Job, you have blossomed like flower just to be cut down by the heartache of an unforgiving world.  And now, for this moment, you feel it is better to have been without than to have had and have taken away.

Job goes on to reason with God by comparing man’s frailty to the resilience of a tree.  Job 14:7-9 says—

“For there is hope of a tree, if it be cut down, that it will sprout again, and that the tender branch thereof will not cease.  Though the root thereof wax old in the earth, and the stock thereof die in the ground; Yet through the scent of water it will bud, and bring forth boughs like a plant.”

Perhaps, it’s time to you become like the tree.  No matter how many times it get mowed down, a little bit of water causes it to spring forth a new shoot.

Now more than ever, it is time to sharpen your saw.  It’s time to know who you are in Christ.  It is time to plant for a future harvest.  Align yourself with people who are going to encourage and lift you up.  Be a blessing to others.  Be obedient to God’s word.

Psalm 1:1-3 says—

“Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful.  But his delight is in the law of the LORD; and in his law doth he meditate day and night.  And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.”

Let your roots find the river of water you once knew.  In God’s time, your season will be upon you.

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