June 26, 2000
CYBERCOLUMN:
How do you handle heat and drought?
___By Berry Simpson
___ "Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord and whose trust is the Lord, For he will be like a tree planted by the water that extends its roots by a stream and will not fear when theheat comes, but its leaves will be green and it will not be anxious in a year of drought nor cease to yield fruit (Jeremiah 17:7-8).
BERRY SIMPSON
___ One of the ways to experience the peace of God is to be like Jeremiah's tree, planted by the water. This verse reminds us how God's peace can help us through unpeaceful times in our lives.
___ It's easy to say we trust in the Lord when our lives are healthy and happy and successful. But do we really put our trust in him? If the heat never comes, every tree will have green leaves. How can we distinguish the tree planted by the water, the one whose trust is the Lord?
___ How will we know we trust in the Lord if we never have a year of drought? Only in a year of drought will we be tested with anxiety and fear.
___ I don't mean that we need drought and heat just so we can stand apart from the crowd and everyone can marvel over our peace, but that we need testing from God to evaluate our own lives and our own level of trust.
___ I remember watching a motivational speaker show an example of what happens when we are under stress. He had a glass full of water, which he shook with his hand. He asked, "What came out when I shook the glass?" Water. "Why did water come out?" Water was inside.
___ His conclusion? When we are under stress and get shaken, what comes out of us is what has been inside us all along. We can't claim that our over-the-top-reaction isn't really us. If anger and resentment come out, well, guess what, we were apparently full of those.
___ The corollary of the illustration also is true. It's only when we shake the glass that we find it was full of water. Until the glass was shaken, we had no idea what was inside.
___ The same with people. It's only when we are shaken that we find what is really inside our hearts. We can fake kindness and gentleness and self-control when things are going easy, but when the load increases and we get shaken and our emotions splash out, we can no longer fake our insides.
___ And so the tree of Jeremiah 17 has advantages only in years of heat and drought. During wet years all trees have green leaves and lots of fruit and anxiety-free lives (assuming trees think along those lines).
___ But when it turns hot and dry, only the tree planted by water that extends its roots by a stream will have anxiety-free green leaves and fruit.
___ That doesn't mean the heat and drought aren't stressful, and it doesn't mean the tree won't suffer. In fact, when the tree rings of real trees are examined, we find even trees growing in ideal locations still suffer from years of drought. However, those trees continued to grow. They didn't die due to the drought.
___ And so the same with us, which was, of course, Jeremiah's point. If we trust in the Lord and make our trust the Lord, we will survive those hot and dry times. We may be damaged, maybe even stunted, but we don't have to be anxious or afraid.
___ When our trust is the Lord, we are filled with his peace, so we can survive hot drought. It will be hard, and we may not grow as fast as we'd have wished, and it may not feel very peaceful as we live through it.
___ The New Testament book of James ways we should learn endurance so we can handle life's stresses. And the reason we learn endurance is so we can handle even more stress. It doesn't promise there will ever be a time when we can level off the stress spiral and look forward to an easy-going life.
___ I remember discussing this in Sunday School one time, and someone said: "Non-believers have incredible stress in their lives, too. Everyday. All day long. Only they don't have the peace of God to help them cope. They are stuck having to rely on their own solutions, or therapy, or something like that."
___ The good news is that the water for Jeremiah's tree is--for the one who trusts in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord--the grace of God. It is an endless stream of living water made available to us by the Source.
___ Don't wait for the drought. The time to grow roots is now.
___ Berry Simpson is a petroleum engineer, writer, runner and Sunday School teacher at First Baptist Church in Midland.
___
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