Giving Tree

Book Read By Author

I recently again read Shel Silverstein’s book, “The Giving Tree” to my 3 year old son and after was left with a strange sense of hopeful gloominess. I had read the book several times before but have never been so uneasily affected by its message. The next day, in a great moment of Otium Sanctum (“Holy Leisure”) I think the Spirit connected some dots for me. The hopefulness pushed out the gloominess and actually got me excited about becoming a Tree.

Below is my dialogue with God:

The giving tree - the boy takes and takes, the tree gives and gives, to the point of giving everything. Am I the boy, and you the tree? It is sad because in the end the tree is left as a stump. I find myself angry at the flippancy of the boy in taking from the tree, even though the tree contends that she is happy. She is happy to be useful, but in the end she is used up. You however although in appearance were cut down, came back, glorified, at the right hand of The father, and you received a name that is greater than all other names. You can’t be used up.

You are an infinite forest of giving, not just a tree. There is no limit to your provision - but it seems that you beckon me to be a tree. One that would be a cheerful giver, to the point of stump, but it seems I need not fear, for my strength and provision pulls from your forest, not my branches, but yours, not my leaves, yours. Not my trunk yours. " I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength."

I am to participate with you, in your mission, of giving. To be completely emptied of myself and find great joy in giving to others, to let Love drive...to the point of stump. Not to glorify the act of martyrdom as the chief ideal, but rather love, and the greatest demonstration of love is as you say - Greater love has no one than this: to lay down ones life for ones friends. So love reigns.

John 12:24-26

24 Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. 25 Anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. 26 Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant also will be. My Father will honor the one who serves me.

We remain a single seed, full of potential and potential energy, not willing or understanding the potential harvests that could come from within. We have great ability, fearful to some, and this ability although innate, is not manufactured in our individual efforts, but because of the system of reproduction God has put into us we have this potential. All we must do is come to the end of ourselves and die.

Maybe the last chapter of The Giving Tree should be that because the tree gave it's apples, and branches, and trunk, it castes it seeds and created a forest. And the boy's children and grandchildren were able to come and play the forest - and the Tree was very happy.

Blaise

“All men seek happiness. This is without exception. Whatever different means they employ, they all tend to this end. The cause of some going to war, and of others avoiding it, is the same desire in both, attended with different views. The will never takes the least step but to this object. This is the motive of every action of every man, even of those who hang themselves.

And yet after such a great number of years, no one without faith has reached the point to which all continually look. All complain, princes and subjects, noblemen and commoners, old and young, strong and weak, learned and ignorant, healthy and sick, of all countries, all times, all ages, and all conditions.

A trial so long, so continuous, and so uniform, should certainly convince us of our inability to reach the good by our own efforts. But example teaches us little. No resemblance is ever so perfect that there is not some slight difference; and hence we expect that our hope will not be deceived on this occasion as before. And thus, while the present never satisfies us, experience dupes us, and from misfortune to misfortune leads us to death, their eternal crown.

What is it then that this desire and this inability proclaim to us, but that there was once in man a true happiness of which there now remain to him only the mark and empty trace, which he in vain tries to fill from all his surroundings, seeking from things absent the help he does not obtain in things present? But these are all inadequate, because the infinite abyss can only be filled by an infinite and immutable object, that is to say, only by God Himself.”

Blaise Pascal Section VII – Morality and Doctrine 425

The Blood that Speaks

Hebrews 12:23-24 -"You have come...²⁴ to Jesus the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.

"Here, then is the voice of the gospel; it is not the sound of a trumpet, nor the voice of words spoken in terrible majesty (Sinai); but the blood speaks, and assuredly there is no sound more piercing, more potent, more prevailing. God heard the voice of Abel's blood and visited Cain with condign punishment for killing his brother; and the precious blood of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, cries in the ears of God with a voice which is ever heard. How can it be imagined that the Lord God should be deaf to the cry of His Son's sacrifice? Lo, these many ages the blood has cried - 'Forgive them! Forgive them! Accept them! Deliver them from going down into the pit, for I have found a ransom!' " CH Spurgeon "The Blood of Sprinking" February 28, 1886.

Oh! precious is the flow

That makes me white as snow;

No other fount I know,

Nothing but the blood of Jesus.

For my pardon, this I see,

Nothing but the blood of Jesus;

For my cleansing this my plea,

Nothing but the blood of Jesus.

Now by this I’ll overcome—

Nothing but the blood of Jesus,

Now by this I’ll reach my home—

Nothing but the blood of Jesus.

Nothing but the Blood of Jesus - Lowry - 1876

the star thrower

From "The Promise of Paradox - Parker J. Palmer (http://amzn.com/0787996963)

“Loren Eiseley tells a story that helps me feel the power of recognizing and embracing life’s contradictions. The great naturalist once spent time in a seaside town called Costabel. Plagued by his lifelong insomnia, Eiseley spent the early morning hours walking on the beach. And every day at sunrise, he found townspeople combing the sand for starfish that had washed ashore during the night to kill them for commercial purposes. For Eiseley, it was a sign, however small, of all the ways the world says no to life.

One morning, Eiseley went out unusually early and discovered a solitary figure on the beach. This man, too, was gathering starfish, but each time he found one alive, he would pick it up and throw it as far as he could out beyond the breaking surf, back to the ocean from which it came. Eiseley found this man on his mission of mercy every morning, day after day, no matter the weather.

Eiseley named this man “the star thrower.” In a moving meditation, he writes of how this man and his predawn work contradicted everything Eiseley had been taught about evolution and the survival of the fittest. Here on the beach in Costabel the strong reached down to save, not crush, the weak. And Eiseley wonders, is there a star thrower at work in the universe, a God who contradicts death, whose nature (to quote the words of Thomas Merton) is ‘mercy within mercy within mercy’?”

The words of eternal life

John 6:60-69

⁶⁰ On hearing it, many of his disciples said, “This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?”

⁶¹ Aware that his disciples were grumbling about this, Jesus said to them, “Does this offend you? ⁶² Then what if you see the Son of Man ascend to where he was before! ⁶³ The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you—they are full of the Spirit and life. ⁶⁴ Yet there are some of you who do not believe.” For Jesus had known from the beginning which of them did not believe and who would betray him. ⁶⁵ He went on to say, “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless the Father has enabled them.”

⁶⁶ From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him.

⁶⁷ “You do not want to leave too, do you?” Jesus asked the Twelve.

⁶⁸ Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. ⁶⁹ We have come to believe and to know that you are the Holy One of God.”

--------------

The Words of Eternal Life

What do they sound like? What would they promise? These "words" of eternal life. How are they different from other words? Words of temporary life. Words of eternal life seem to elicit a sense of transcendent meaning, something outside reality giving the words extra, super-natural, eternal meaning. I have heard someone say that words are like buckets and we as humans put meaning into those buckets. What kind of meaning would Peter have perceived to have associated Jesus' words as eternal? "You have the Words of Eternal Life" Peter says. Jesus helps us to understand something beyond ourselves. He is our translator. Jesus quotes Isaiah when he says "They will be taught by God" (John 6:45). God in a man-suit, our great immanuel, steps in to our reality, opens his mouth and speaks. "The Word became Flesh and made his dwelling among us" (John 1:14). If you found them would you listen? Would you follow their instruction? Would you tell others? Would you cover your ears or look for noise to drown them out? Would you hide out in rationalization? Letting the resistance win.

Or like Peter simple say, "I have no choice - you have the words of eternal life, you are my only hope. I am all in. Whatever you say."

Lewis and Edwards on the Layers of Self-Admiration from desiringGod

http://www.desiringgod.org/Blog/1962_lewis_and_edwards_on_the_layers_of_selfadmiration/

How Hearts Are Softened - C.H. Spurgeon - 9/18/1887

Zechariah 12:10-11 "And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplications: and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for him, as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn.
In that day shall there be a great mourning in Jerusalem, as the mourning of Hadadrimmon in the valley of Megiddon. "


Slightly altered to today's english

Nothing good can come out of a stony heart; it is barren as a rock. To be unfeeling is to be unfruitful. Prayer without desire, praise without emotion, preaching without earnestness – what are all these? Like the marble images of life, they are cold and dead. Insensibility is a deadly sign. Frequently it is the next stage to destruction.

I. Observe that holy tenderness arises out of divine operation. “I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and supplications.”

- It is not in fallen man to renew his own heart. Can the adamant turn itself to wax, or the granite soften itself to clay? Only He that stretched out the heavens and laid the foundation of the earth can form and reform the spirit of man within him. The power to make the rock of our nature flow with rives of repentance is not in the rock itself.
- The Spirit of God is prompt to give life and feeling. In ancient times He moved upon the face of the waters, and by His power order came out of confusion. The same Spirit at this time broods over our souls, and reduces the chaos of our natural state to light and life and obedience. There lies the hope of our ruined nature. Jehovah who made us can make us over again. Our case is not beyond His power. Is anything too hard for the Lord? Is the Spirit of the Lord straitened? He can change the millstone into a mass of feeling, and dissolve iron and steel into a flood of tears. When He deals with the human mind by His secret and mysterious operations, He fills it with new life, perception, and emotion.
- The Holy Spirit makes us like wax, and we become impressible to His sacred seal. Remember, you that are hard of heart, that your hope lies this way; God Himself, who melts the icebergs of the arctic, must make your soul to yield up its hardness in the presence of His love. Nothing short of the work of God within you can effect this…The Spirit of God must work regeneration in you. He is able of stones to raise up children of Abraham; but until He works you are dead and insensible.
- God’s aim is that grace may reign by delivering us from our natural impenitence, and by causing us to sorrow because we have sinned… Do not think, therefore that when you feel the Holy Ghost melting you, that the Father will refuse you; it is He that sent the Holy Ghost to deal with you. Imagine not that you can feel repentance for sin and bow in sorrow at the Savior’s feet, and that Jesus will reject you; for it is He who sent the Spirit of grace to bring you to repentance, and make you mourn because of the ill which you have done.
- The Spirit is as the wind, invisible save by its effects. The Holy Ghost comes as the dew which in soft silence refreshes the tender herb. North with sound of trumpet or observation of man doth the Spirit perform his gracious deeds. His working is one of the secrets and mysteries which no man can explain to his fellow…Do not, therefore, expect to be informed when the Spirit is upon you.
- The Holy Spirit can make your heart as tender as the apple of the eye, and cause your conscience to be as sensitive as a raw wound, which feels the slightest touch. God grant us grace to deal with Him about these things, and not to be looking to ourselves. As well hope to extract juice from the stones of the sea-beach, as spiritual feeling from the carnal mind. He who can make the dray bones lice, and He alone, can make the hardened mourn over sin.