Just staying off into the vastness of your majesty, oh Lord. Desert surrounds me–each way that I look. The rocks and the sand and the hills are my pain, they are how I feel. Yet then there’s that one little tree. That one mighty tree atop the highest of hills (closest to me anyway), that one little tree all alone. Yet it grows in this desert through the toughest terrain. Where no other life can, it lives. I remember the first night in Arad, I noticed that same little tree. Amidst this vast desert, this magnificent site, you keep taking me back to that tree. Could it be that is me Lord? Could it be you’re calling me to still grow amidst the desert I feel? Because Lord that’s how I feel–so dry, so alone. I feel like love has run dry. Could it be that the world this morning was for me? To let your love be enough to sustain and to grow me even what I feel like the love of others has run dry, like a desert. I want to be that tree Lord. I want to be the tree that “in the year of drought…shows no distress, but still bears fruit” (Jer 17:8). I don’t want the way that I feel to dictate the way that I act, the way that I love. I want to be that tree. I want to stand firm in moments of hardship, through deserts of life–even if it means standing alone. I want your love to be enough to water my roots–to make me have life through it all. I want your love to be the only source that I need–my living water, my well-spring to life. I want to be that tree. And in the same way you’ve provided for it, Lord, I know that you’ll provide for me.
A lot of processing has occurred since I wrote that journal entry, both personally and with my team. As a result, many things have changed in terms of how I feel. The one thing that hasn’t changed though, and I’m determined not to change, is my attitude towards that tree. I want that tree to serve as a point of reference for me. I want the perseverance of that tree–it’s ability to survive through the toughest terrain–to represent my own faith, withstanding whatever gets thrown my way. With each passing day, I grow stronger and stronger because I’ve realized it’s God and God alone that I need. His love is what propels me to grow. His love is what wills me to live. And as I sit on this truth, and I look at that tree, I realize that tree is not nearly as lonely as it first seemed.
