Resting in His Branches

Let God's promises shine on your problems.  ~Corrie ten Boom

Within a week after the parsonage RB and I were living in was destroyed in the fire which caused our Sarah's death, the church congregation banded together to tear the house down.  It was a barren sight. The senior pastor's parsonage, the church, the school and our parsonage sat in sort of a square, so the bleak bareness greeted us from every angle.

It was a long fall and winter of grief--the lowest part of our life together. Days filled with questions about how we could make it, a deep despair coloring our days.   Our loving church family began building us another home -- on a vacant portion of the campus that faced the opposite direction. However, every time we looked towards the "old house" the the bareness greeted us, even when the snow melted and Spring appeared.  One day the following summer, my flower-loving husband asked me to come look at something.  There in the barrenness was a perfect August lily.

That first lily was a promise to RB and me.  Oh, the pain didn't go away, but light crept through the broken pieces of our heart. And, for the next two years, that lily bloomed, and was joined with a second and third lily. 

In Ezekiel 17 we read of a nation who was grieving.  It was the lowest part of  Israel's history.  They lost their glory.  They were in despair.  Jerusalem had fallen to the Babylonians, their temple burned, their king killed and thousands had been taken captive.  It was into this grief-stricken people Ezekiel was sent with a message of hope--a tree will be planted.

God planted a small shoot on a high mountain which soon grew into greatness. The Bible tells us that birds would build nests in the tree's branches and find shade. And so God's Son, Jesus, was born. A tiny baby, but not for long. Just as the cedar on the mountain grew to greatness, so Jesus grew--sheltering others, dying for sins, rising from the grave.  

I don't know what your level of despair is today, but I do know that God sees your heart.  You may not find a lily, but God has a message of hope for you--the same hope of Israel--a Tree whose branches will shelter your heart. Rest in His branches, He's sturdy enough to hold the heaviest of burdens. 

Infertility 
  
     Depression

          Financial crisis  
        
               An unfaithful spouse

                    The death of a child
                         
                          Physical disease 

                               Undisciplined sin

                                     Wounded spirit

Fly to the branches of God's faithfulness, His love, His peace and His forgiveness.  He's calling, Come unto me all you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest. And that is a promise God will fulfill.