Have you ever seen or stood below a giant sequoia tree? My family and I encountered a grove of them at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh a couple months ago. We have also seen the gigantic redwoods out at Muir Woods during a trip to San Francisco back in 2011. It is quite a humbling experience to stand beneath these grand specimens of God’s creation! The writer of my daily devotional this morning was talking about sequoia trees ( The Methodist Book of Daily Prayer , p. 168-169). Even though sequoias are among the world’s largest trees, they don’t have their own separate root systems. Instead, their roots intertwine with the roots of neighboring trees. That’s how they support and strengthen one another. “When a storm hits,” the writer observes, “they literally hold each other up.” The writer went on to observe that we often want to see ourselves as independent, self-sufficient, and self-reliant. When problems come our way, we want to be able to handle them ourselves. “But this isn’t how we are created to live,” the writer suggests. “We are made to derive our strength from a power outside ourselves. We are meant to be rooted in Christ and to establish our strength from a source beyond ourselves.” In other words, we are meant to be like the giant sequoias—bound together and connected to one another for mutual strength and support. The devotional closed with a line that I really like: “The bad news is that you can’t do life alone. The good news is that you don’t have to.” Today I thank God for our rootedness together in Christ and in community with one another here at Signal Crest.
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This morning, I went out to my car to head down the mountain to meet some clergy colleagues for coffee, and my car wouldn’t start. The battery was completely dead. No ding sound. No dashboard lights. Nothing. I had suspected this day was coming. My car has been starting more and more sluggishly over the past few weeks, but I hadn’t done anything about it. I mean, why do today what you can put off until tomorrow, right? So I borrowed Wesley’s car and made it to my coffee meeting. On the way back, I stopped by the auto parts store and bought a new battery. I didn’t have enough cash, so I had to “charge” it. I hope to install it shortly, and I hope it’s an overall “positive” experience. It did get me thinking about our spiritual lives. Sometimes our spiritual batteries can be a little sluggish. And sometimes, especially if we let it go on for too long, our batteries can become totally drained, depleted, dead. No energy. No interest. Nothing. When that happens, it’s good for us to know: What recharges your spiritual battery? What gives you that spiritual jump start that renews and reenergizes you? For me, it can be worship, and particularly upbeat music that gets my toes tapping and my hands clapping. As an introvert, it can also be some good solo time, like a walk in the woods to soak in the beauty of God’s creation, or some time spent in the silence and stillness of prayer. But it can also be going around and making some visits to some members of our church family, listening to them share from the stories of their lives. It's vital for us to keep our spiritual batteries charged, and not to ignore the signs and symptoms that we are running low, but to engage in those spiritual practices that refresh and reinvigorate our spirits. That’s how we can best live the kind of life that Paul says really matters, a life of “faith working through (energoumene, energized by, fully charged with) love” (Galatians 5:6).
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Midweek Message
Sometimes I stumble upon resurrection stories. I’m not just talking about the ones we find in the Bible, at the end of the Gospels, where the risen Jesus shimmies through locked doors and eats fish sandwiches and pronounces peace upon the disciples. I’m talking about the resurrection stories of folks who are making their way into a new life after a separation or divorce, or who are finally coming to see a glimmer of hope in the middle of trudging through a long dark tunnel of grief. I’m talking about the kinds of resurrection stories that are often shared in recovery ministries, where persons talk about finding new life after facing their addictions or compulsions. Resurrection stories are all over the place, if we have eyes to see and ears to hear. Just this past week, I read a news blurb about a fellow out in San Antonio named Doug Ruch. He has prostate cancer, and in January he learned that it is terminal. He was told he has maybe a year and a half left to live. He decided he wanted to spend whatever time he has left volunteering to help people in all 50 states. That became his new life mission. So he raised some funds, packed all his stuff in his 2017 Chevrolet Malibu, and hit the road from Texas headed north. He arrived in Seattle and volunteered at food banks, senior centers, and other service organizations. He’s now making his way from state to state, and God bless him, I hope he makes it to all fifty! But the thing that struck me is that he says he feels so invigorated—even in spite of his diagnosis—that he wakes up every morning feeling like he’s been “shot out of a cannon.” That sounds like resurrection to me! I don’t know about you, but Doug inspires me. I wonder if you’re wondering, like me, what would you want to do if you knew that your time left in this life were limited? What would get you waking up every morning feeling like you’ve been shot out of a cannon? And if you’re not already living your resurrection story, why on earth would you put it off even one more day?
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