Growth...

Growth....5-9-2025

Last year, when I left administration to return to the classroom, three of my teachers gave me a pink dogwood tree. I have prayed over and nurtured this tree throughout the past year. It was thriving and growing. Then something happened, and either my son or my husband backed over it. It broke near the base. My youngest had come home that weekend. I was going to cut the tree to the point where it broke. Knowing what the tree, the gesture of their friendship, meant to me, they tried grafting it together. For months, I saw nothing. Then a few sprouts from the base. The tree began to grow branches on the part that had broken, and then beneath the break.

Romans 11:17-19, "If some of the branches have been broken off, and you, though a wild olive shoot, have been grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing sap from the olive root, do not consider yourself to be superior to those other branches. If you do, consider this: You do not support the root, but the root supports you. You will say then, “Branches were broken off so that I could be grafted in.”

You see, sometimes we become like the branches of a tree. We go to God, believe, and become part of his family. We are the branches, He is the tree of life. Sometimes strong winds, decay, struggles, or addictions cause the branch to die or become broken. God can graft us back. The branch can be restored, or, as in the case above, the branch begins to bring forth new life. We begin to grow and flourish in His mercy and goodness. In this story, the Israelites are the older branches, and the Gentiles are the newer branches being grafted into experience God's goodness and His blessings. But I see in this the story, God enveloping us through His strong trunk and roots. We are all part of God, the tree. He is the base and the roots. He provides our structure, our support, and our life-giving nourishment.

As I watch this tree begin to build its new life, it will look different than the tree it was before. It will grow differently from its original shape and structure. It will learn how to lean on the base for strength because of the damage that was done. As its strong main branches change, and the new small branches become stronger, the tree will begin to grow. With love and God's grace, it will become more than what it was. It will become new, just as we are in Christ.