Two lives imitating trees

In last week's post Two trees imitating life?, I wrote about two tree sculptures imitating life, or death, or maybe even tennis balls, depending on how you view the art. I promised to follow up this week with more about the blessed life being like a tree planted by water, and here's a picture of some pretty cool tree roots to get you thinking of what the tree planted by water may look like:

Trees and their roots growing by a creek

The passage I shared with you last week actually describes two lives that are like trees, just very different kinds. One life is blessed, but the other is cursed.

     Thus says the Lord,
     "Cursed is the man who trusts in mankind
     And makes flesh his strength,
     And whose heart turns away from the Lord.
     For he will be like a bush in the desert
     And will not see when prosperity comes,
     But will live in stony wastes in the wilderness,
     A land of salt without inhabitant.
     Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord
     And whose trust is the Lord.
     For he will be like a tree planted by the water,
     That extends its roots by a stream
     And will not fear when the heat comes;
     But its leaves will be green,
     And it will not be anxious in a year of drought
     Nor cease to yield fruit."

     -- Jeremiah 17:5-8 (NASB)

The cursed life imitates a bush in the desert -- relying on entirely wrong things to keep it alive. While the desert bush may fight and scrap and somehow stay alive, it's unlikely to ever thrive. Likewise, when we trust only in our own strength, or the strength of our family, friends, posse or gang, we're going to struggle instead of thriving. And our lives will ultimately become desolate.

The second life Jeremiah mentions is the blessed life, the one compared to a tree living by the water. In the photo, you can see how large the roots have grown as they reach out over and down into the creek. It may be hard in this winter season to imagine drought and heat, but these trees have sent down their roots so that even in the heat of summer, they can continue getting the water they need to thrive.

When the heat comes
Just as roots save a tree and keep it alive, we can cultivate faithful, obedient practices in our walk with God that will prepare us for times of distress and keep us from setting up camp in the desert places we sometimes find ourselves.

Notice that Jeremiah doesn't say the tree planted by the stream will not fear if the heat comes. He says the tree "will not fear when the heat comes" (v. 8, emphasis mine). When.

No one wants that word, "when." When a man comes home and tells his family he has lost his job. When the doctor speaks the word "cancer." When a car accident changes lives. When a spouse of several decades walks out. When a young son dies. When, when, when.

Droughts come into our lives in varied ways -- even to those of us who are Christians. Our faith does not provide a genie in a bottle, ready to grant our every wish and give us perfect lives.

No, instead of waiting for a genie to show up, we Christians have a greater gift, a greater promise to cling to: God is with us and sustains us when the heat comes, and our faith means that we will continue to grow and bear fruit, even after the droughts have done their worst. He has planted us where we will grow best and will always provide for our needs.

Let that truth of God's protection seep into your heart and mind: You have been planted by the water. Be confident that your roots are strong and that He will sustain you and help you bear fruit.

What are some of the ways you feel sustained? For me, it's writing and sharing a weekly message with you, but it's also spending time with family and friends, going for a challenging run, listening to music, or going to a museum.

I'd love to hear your stories of how your life is imitating the green tree and what God has put into your life to sustain you. Or maybe you'd like to share about a time that your life was more like that desert bush and God rescued from that desolate, desperate place. Either way, I'd love to hear your stories. So please share them in the comments below.

A small soap-box moment
Now, I hope you'll forgive me a sudden topic shift and a brief moment on the soap box. But I'd like to tell you about an issue that's important to me as a writer of a blog and as someone who relies on the internet for research, social networking and so much more.

You may have noticed that Google has a black swath across its logo today on its home page. If you click on the black swath, you'll go to this story about proposed legislation that would limit freedom of expression on the Internet.

We hear all the time about oppressive regimes that shut down Google and other sites, but I've always thought I lived in a country that was not one of those regimes. However, there's a vote next Tuesday -- January 24 -- that could considerably weaken our country's ability to get information from sites many of us frequent (Wikipedia, Google, Wordpress, Facebook, Twitter, ...). Who's behind this bill? Big media and the entertainment industry. Here's a video that gives a better summary than I've given.

I was really frustrated this weekend that NBC was able to have a stranglehold on Olympic trials marathon coverage -- reducing those of us who didn't travel to Houston for the event to getting text updates from sites other than NBC. NBC didn't broadcast the event live (I guess Babar cartoons are sacrosanct for them). And they refused to allow video coverage on other sites. It wasn't the most fun way to follow an exceptionally exciting set of races, but for most of us who cared, it was the only way.

This small example points to a greater problem with the monopoly big media would like to have on content. And it simply doesn't sit well with me. If it doesn't sit well with you either, please consider signing the petition against SOPA/PIPA legislation.

Thanks. I'll just go put my box away now.

Two trees imitating life?

I've been working on a book chapter about Jeremiah 17:5-8, in which Jeremiah compares a cursed man to a bush in the desert who will live "in a land of salt without inhabitant" (v. 6).

Well, I had never heard of a land of salt and really couldn't picture what that might look like, and so I googled the phrase just to see what would come up. The Bonneville Salt Flats just outside of Salt Lake City, Utah, showed up in the list of hits.

If you read through the Google hits for the Bonneville Salt Flats, you'll see words like "nothing for miles," "desolate," and "barren." Famous races happen there, by car and on foot, but -- and this is mainly for my sweet husband -- please don't feel like you have to go run the 100-mile race there ... ever. (Even if you could leave your salt tablets at home and still be okay.) Despite the attraction for speed junkies, there's a whole lot of nothing to this desert land.

Now, even if you have never been to such a desolate place, you probably know or can guess how the human mind reacts to nothingness, to vast desert stretches, to a land of salt with no inhabitants.

As artist Karl Momen drove through the salt flats, his mind filled with a vision of a tree -- perhaps out of a desperate need to see something, anything, growing and green out in the salt flats. Momen created an 87' tall sculpture along Highway 80, called "The Tree of Utah (Metaphor)." (Here's a fun blog with photos of the sculpture, and the blogger has been so inspired by it that she's knitting socks to resemble the sculpture.) Other bloggers have less kind things to say about the sculpture.

Yep -- you know me. I can stumble across a tree anywhere, even in the middle of research about miles of nothingness.

As I looked through the images for this sculpture, I thought about art imitating life. I don't particularly like Momen's sculpture, though I do understand the urge to fill up nothingness with something. But his sculpture definitely attempts to suggest flourishing life in the most unlikely of terrains. Near the main sculpture, Momen added pods of concrete, as if the tree has flowered and shed seed pods or leaves.

There's another tree sculpture that I prefer by comparison, though I wouldn't say it suggests flourishing life:

This "tree" greets visitors to the NC Museum of Art: "Askew," by Roxy Paine

I've seen actual birds perch on this stainless steel sculpture of a tree, and so it's a real enough imitation of life for them to accept as a good place to rest, but there's nothing about it to suggest thriving, growing life. And I doubt birds would choose to nest there (certainly not in summer, anyway, when the eggs would be hard-boiled by noon.)

Like them or hate them, both sculptures are art and, in their own ways, attempt to imitate some aspect of living or dying. I guess I simply prefer a different sort of art imitating life.

So tell me, which of the two sculptures do you prefer?

The tree planted by water
By the way, you may be curious about why I'm writing about that passage in Jeremiah. While the cursed man is like the desert bush living in an uninhabited land, there's a blessed man who trusts in the Lord. And I absolutely love and cling to Jeremiah's description of this man:

     For he will be like a tree planted by the water,
     That extends its roots by a stream
     And will not fear when the heat comes;
     But its leaves will be green,
     And it will not be anxious in a year of drought
     Nor cease to yield fruit.
     -- Jeremiah 17:8 (NASB)

It's pouring a cold rain where I am today, and so it's hard to consider heat and drought, but fear and anxiety can be with us in any season of the year. So join me here next week, as I talk about this tree planted by the water ... and how we can cling to the promise of its yield.

The Lady Baltimore

Last August, when I took my in-laws to the local farmer's market, they bought my husband and me a lovely hibiscus, called a "Lady Baltimore," for our garden. The seller at the market promised that it's a perennial in this area. I'll admit to being skeptical at the time.

By the end of my in-laws' visit, though, the plant looked like it wouldn't even live to make it out of the pot and into the ground. But it did live, and I was delighted when it bloomed several times last August.

Although it was a single stalk last year, the seller promised it would grow back more bush-like this year, with multiple stalks. I was just happy when one stalk poked up through the ground this spring and started sprouting leaves and then buds. I've spent many mornings since the first sign of green giving it ample water to grow tall and strong.

Today, the first bloom opened. I had seen just a hint of fuchsia yesterday evening, but this morning, the bloom was open and full and the new hangout for one very thrilled bee (too shy for photos):

The Lady Baltimore

I'm doubly pleased that it came back this year, because I had picked out this variety in particular for its name. One of my favorite aunts -- who lived just outside of Baltimore for my entire life -- died in March 2010. When I saw the "Lady Baltimore" name on this particular hibiscus, I knew it was the right one for me. It would remind me of my in-laws' kindness but also remind me of my aunt, who was always interested in what I was doing and always one of my biggest fans.

A replenishing place

Hi, Friends,

Do you have a place where you go to renew your spirit or rejuvenate physically and mentally? For my husband and me, that place is the NC mountains. Even this time of year, when there's still snow and ice on the ground -- not to mention salt and sand on the roads -- we love being there. How I feel when we're there and when we've just come back is like the tree in this verse from Jeremiah:

Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord ... For he will be like a tree planted by the water, that extends its roots by a stream and will not fear when the heat comes.
-- Jeremiah 17:7-8