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A Tough Root

6/14/2021

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"Oof! This azalea is tenacious!"
Its roots so deep, and combined with the mid-day heat and poison ivy lacing through its tangle of branches my dream of relocating it for better spacing in our front hedge begins to fade.
Too hard?
Silly I guess, to say digging an azalea and moving it is too hard. I am prone to give up too easily and too soon, and maybe, just maybe, at some point I could enlist some help. Part of the glaring problem in conquering difficult tasks is my lack of determination to get'r done. In some things though, it is my genuine lack of strength and willpower.
"It is God who works in [me] both to will and to do His good pleasure…[and let] those of us who are mature think this way, and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you."
Philippians 2:12; 3:15 [ESV]
Forgiveness is difficult
Jesus used two metaphors for extreme difficulty. One was a mountain; in fact He used two different mountains that carried deeper inference for His audience, and on at least one occasion, a mulberry tree. If you were a first century gardener tasked with removing such a tree you would have gotten His point immediately. Their roots make removal especially difficult. A backhoe might help, but then, well, yeah, there was a shortage in Israel at the time.
Some things like forgiveness are too difficult to comprehend overcoming. We are neither able to perceive a way through, nor imagine the means to remove our particular obstructing obstacle.
"Pay attention to yourselves! If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him, and if he sins against you seven times in the day, and turns to you seven times, saying, I repent, you must forgive him."
The apostles said to the Lord, "Increase our faith!"
And the Lord said, "If you had faith like a grain of mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, 'Be uprooted and planted in the sea', and it would obey you."
Luke 17:3-5 [ESV]
The other side of the point in Jesus' use of the mulberry metaphor beside finding uncanny strength for forgiveness was to point out that when we are confronted with a person that ought to be cast into the sea with a millstone around their neck (Luke 17:1, 2) - so they don't float back up - we need to let God handle it. Justice may not be not in our hands to perform.
Sometimes we would rather get rid of the offender than to forgive, but even if good riddance is called for it it is more often than not out of our hands.
"It's impossible to get rid of this offensive person in my life," you say, but the mature turn to the Lord and wait upon (trust) His methods, timing and strength.
Grace today y'all!
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