Roots

Wednesday 3/5/2014 4:48 AM

Well, my idea of giving up social media and Scrabble for Lent so that I have more time to exercise and have devotions has worked for the first morning.  Over the course of the past few months I have slowly drifted away from my regular morning routine.  It is time to get grounded again.

My reading today includes an excerpt from The New Man for Our Time, by Elton Trueblood.  He writes, “We, indeed, still have a little piety; we say a few hasty prayers; we sing meaningfully a few hymns; we read snatches from the Bible.  But all of this is far removed from the massive dose that we sorely need if we are to be men and women who can perform a healing service in our generation.  The seat of our disease, says Helmut Thielicke, ‘is not in the branches of our nerves at all but rather in our roots which are stunted and starved.  … To work without praying and without listening means only to grow and spread oneself upward, without striking roots and without an equivalent in the earth.’  Trees can grow well in rocky soil, as I can attest by looking out the window of my mountain writing cabin, but they do this only by finding crevices in the rocks where the roots are able to penetrate deeply.”

Of late I have definitely been in the “say a few hasty prayers, sing a few hymns and read snatches of the Bible” camp of Christianity.  I feel as if my life has been stunted as a result.  I’m not sure why, but I have a sense of foreboding lately, as if something of great consequence is going to happen in my life.  I think it is time to send down some roots into the love of God.