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The morning air is crisp and cold
with a stiff southwestern breeze coming in at the wooded hillside. Shifting my 20 gauge rifle from one shoulder
to the other I hear the acorns as they rattle through the multitude of branches
and leaves summoned by gravity toward the loamy mountain soil. However, it is not the prey I’m searching for
in this Arkansas
woodland that stirs the trees to release their seed into gravity’s waiting
hands. It is instead the breeze.
I’ve seen and felt this same
southwestern breeze countless times over.
Felt its cold chill through the winter months and its loving embrace in
the smothering heat of our humid summers.
Today it does neither. The Ozark Mountain
sunrise has already shooed away the morning September fog and as I stand along
the wooded trail I’m gifted with a new perspective of an easily dismissed
spectacle, an oak tree.
As it juts out from the hill at a
slightly different angle than the hickory or elm that surrounds it, the great
oak stands as a monolith of past winters, spring storms, and the nearly
ever-present mountain breeze. It is a
fortress of bark and branch. A seemingly
invincible haven for the same quarry I have come to this very wood to
hunt. The oak rears up from the leafy
ground and stretches all its vast array of limbs into the very heavens. It is a dense and immovable castle…a natural
skyscraper…rooted to the earth, and yet reaching for the cosmic. It is majestic. It is lovely.
It is blessed.
I see this all as I have so many
times before on this same hill and begin to understand at last how this sight
relates to the world around me. It is
the church, the Bride of Christ. It is
the Christian. It is the pastor and
parishioner.
And yet the tree does not
move. It does what it was always meant
to do. It lives as it was always meant
to live.
The same father that created the
oak crafted and designed our species.
For that matter, God spoke the entirety of everything we can even begin
to hope to wrap our simple minds around into being. He did so with strength and purpose so that we
might have strength and purpose.
Yet we are not like the oak. We can not remain unmoved or unravaged by the
external forces around us. As a creation
we were meant to be one thing and as a people we are portraying a different nature. Why?
We think we know the answer. We pretend we know the answer. We pretend sometimes to be free when in fact
we are more like a falling acorn than a stable oak.
The heartbeat of the Father is for
His people. And I believe He is calling
that people (you and I) to a place of deepness with Him more profound and
unimaginable than of us have ever dared to dream.
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