When God Speaks Through a Tree
One of the things I love most about God is His creation. My eyes take in this beauty on my daily walks through the neighborhood. There is always something new to admire.
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” — Genesis 1:1
On my walk this morning, a magnificent tree caught my eye, for it stood perfectly straight but stretching from one side was a large, dead branch, its weight pulling part of the tree downward. Dead branches drain a tree’s energy, blocking sunlight from its inner parts and providing a welcome sign to pests and wood-decaying fungus.
Possibly this tree is teaching us a lesson about letting go of things that are dead inside us and holding us down.
Letting Go of Guilt Begins with Accepting God’s Forgiveness.
What dead branch are we still carrying?
Is it regret? A past mistake? An old wound? Words someone spoke over us years ago that I still believe?
Sometimes the heaviest branches are the ones no one else can see.
Do we stay mired in our past with regret so deeply we really don’t believe God has forgiven us? That we are not a new creation. We’ve read these words, but we struggle to believe those words apply.
“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!”
I used to wonder how God could call David “a man after His own heart” after everything David had done. Then I realized perhaps David’s story is in Scripture not because he was perfect, but because he continually returned to God with a repentant heart.
The Bible is filled with stories of people who failed spectacularly, yet God never stopped pursuing them.
Moses, Abraham, who twice claimed Sarah was his sister, Zacchaeus, the tax collector, the prodigal son….
Their failures were not the end of their stories. Neither are ours.
God already knows we are sinners. It is why he sent his son, the ultimate gift that he’s given us. Jesus didn’t die only for the sins we find easy to forgive. He died for the ones we still carry long after God has already removed them.
Years ago, someone said something to me that I’ve never forgotten:
“If you’ve confessed your sin but refuse to forgive yourself, you’re not fully accepting what Jesus has already done for you.”
Those words have stayed with me. When we carry all-consuming thoughts of guilt, regret, we can’t step forward. We can’t see the gift of life God continues to give us.
Maybe it’s time to prune that dead branch you’ve been carrying, knowing that God is with you every step of the way, whatever you are going through.
God-Incidences Remind Us We Are Never Alone
Last night I watched the final episode of Grantchester. Alphy, the village vicar, was struggling with a crisis of faith after discovering painful truths about the mother who abandoned him as a child. Feeling rejected all over again, he questioned whether God had ever truly been with him.
His best friend, Inspector Geordie, asked him about a vision he’d experienced as a little boy.
“What did God say to you?”
Alphy answered,
“Even when I feel furthest away from You… You are here.”
Then Inspector Geordie quietly handed him Alphy’s childhood card that had been stolen from him with those very words printed on it.
To me, that was a God-incidence.
God gives us these incidents to bring light into our lives when we are desperate, when we need to know we are forgiven, when we need to know that he is with us, that there is light. His love has never left us.
Maybe today God is inviting you to let go of the dead branch that has been weighing you down.
Because even when you feel furthest away…
He is here.
May you find it so.
