We are not the sum of our parts. The Summer Olympics of 2012 were replete with stories of athletes who overcame great odds to compete in their sport. Double amputee, Oscar Pistorius, from South Africa was one of the most visible.
Most of the people I am acquainted with have suffered great loss in their lives. Some of those losses are merely inconvenient, and some are tragic. I am thinking of a family member who lost a thriving business and most of their retirement income. A friend lost a great job when the company downsized. Then there is the younger brother and son who committed suicide. A beloved minister who touched the lives of many, who contracted aids in the later years of his life. Many have endured the pain of a marriage that grows cold and falls apart. I have a friend who is in that process as I write this.
Many of us live with scars of regret for things we wish we had not done and equally painful scars of regret for opportunities we missed. There are skeletons yet undiscovered. None of us will come to the end of this journey in the same state that we began it.
And it is not about "fault".
Throughout scripture the metaphor of a tree is used to illustrate the life process in a person. It's roots, trunk, branches, leaves, and fruit, all have a type in our lives as does it's size, shape, health, species, and even it's location. I have large oak trees where I live and there is rarely a morning that I do not find a limb from them laying in the yard, dead, and broken. Oak trees shed their old, dry limbs. With my peach trees and fig tree it is not so. I have to cut the old limbs off myself. Sometimes the limb is healthy, supple, and full of leaves. But I know that it is in the wrong place,growing in the wrong direction or sprouting too low on the trunk. It will rob the limbs above it of nutrients and energy. In cutting the limb off, I will often change the shape of the tree. It looks odd and uneven. But I also know that other limbs will grow. In the fall, there are roses that have every limb cut off and only a stalk remains! Then in the Spring, new limbs emerge strong and healthy and loaded with fragrant blooms.
The real health of a tree or a person is not the amount of leaves or the shape it is in but the fruit it bears. I have many friends who spend their lives cultivating a good looking tree full of leaves with flawless shapes and strong branches. Sadly, they produce little if any fruit of the spirit.
Fruitfulness is the crowning glory of God's work in you.
"Herein is my Father glorified, that you bear much fruit." John 15:8
The tree of your life is made up of growth, change, choices, actions, paths, plans,and events. These are not fruit but merely limbs or branches which will hopefully bear fruit. These produce other branches which produce still others. Through the years you grow, learn, experience, act, and respond. You mature hopefully, marry perhaps, have children, work, earn, build, and provide.It is the stuff of life. You will also loose. You may lose a job, a home, your health, a marriage, a ministry, or children. You may loose these limbs by the natural process of age. You simply get too old for it. A thing starts out good but goes bad. Sometimes you are damaged by someone else and a limb is lost. Sometimes it is your fault. You sinned, or did something else stupid, willful, and stubborn. Sometimes God takes something away to keep it from harming us or wasting our energy. None of these losses are pleasant or comfortable. All are painful and most are embarrassing. They can leave us feeling lopsided and off balanced. We may live life with the feeling that something is "missing". Parts of us are incomplete.
What is MOST important is that you understand that no single branch of your life defines you. Not even the missing ones. Nor do they reflect all that you are. You are not "the divorcee", "the loser", "the adulterer", "the drunk", "the bankrupt", "the cripple".
Oscar Pistorius ran in the Olympics because he did not want to be relegated to only the paralympics. He did not mind that he did not even come close to winning a medal. What was important was that he would be known as an "Olympic Athlete". Missing limbs would not define who he was on that track. And so we will remember him for what was in his heart and the fruit it produced!
God cares less about the shape you are in and more about your willingness to surrender what remains to Him and see what an abundance of fruit it can produce!
