Читать книгу Among the Myrtle Trees - Vanessa Crosson - Страница 6

I remember sitting on the corner of my bed in a lamp-lit room when I was ten-years-old, feeling an overwhelming sense of insecurity and need. A deep hunger for significance pulled at my heart. I don’t remember all the questions I asked my mom that night. I just remember talking through all the tears and longing for answers to some of life’s deepest questions: “Why am I here? How were we created? What exactly did Jesus do for me? Why in the world did He do that?” My mom might not have felt prepared for my pop-quiz, but through her answers, I came to the knowledge of Christ and my need for Him. She prayed over me and walked me through the utterances of “God I need you. Thank you for what you did for me on the cross. Come into my heart.” The aftermath of the questions, tears and emotion was humbling. I was surrounded by truth….His truth. Where I once felt insecure in the crazy world around me….I now feel secure in Him. Hope lifted me. Grace embraced me. Purpose filled my heart and, through Christ, I received faith.

We all have our own stories. Each one involves diverse circumstances and different timing, but the same God. He offers and gives us all our very own version of “Amazing Grace.” That one-on-one, personal experience with the Father cannot be drummed-up or duplicated. It is like our own “burning bush” experience that changes us from the inside out. We walk as best we know how on our new legs of faith, learning to trust and rely on Him more and more each day. The challenge today, just as it was in biblical times, is holding to that faith as strongly as the day you received it.

There are times in our lives that cause us to question every core truth we’ve ever known. This world we live in can weaken our faith, and personal tragedy can flat-out knock it into extinction. We start out singing “Blessed Assurance,” then on down the winding road our tune changes to “It’s A Hard Knock Life.” Although the Israelites may have not known the words to those songs, they were defiantly singing to their own tune. They were God’s “chosen people,” but they certainly didn’t feel like it. Because of their consistent disobedience to the One True God and refusal to listen to warnings through those whom God had sent, the Israelites found themselves overtaken by the Babylonian empire. They became prisoners of war in a foreign land for seventy….long….years. After surviving the exile and tumultuous ups and downs of returning to their homeland, they found themselves with a bad case of the spiritual doldrums. They struggled to find their significance and wrestled with their purpose – the same place that many of us find ourselves today.

But there’s another place….a sweet spot in scripture to which we must go. This is the book of Zechariah, ironically positioned as the next-to-last chapter of the Old Testament, just before the New Testament begins. When the exile-born prophet shares his testimony, his intimate encounter with the Living God, it’s as though he stutters and stammers as to report all that he saw, heard, felt and smelled. He repeats himself three times in seven sentences, saying “among the myrtle trees.” The critic in me wants to take my red pen, mark out two of them and say, “Really, Zechariah? What kind of trees? Don’t repeat yourself. We heard you the first time!” But I think Zechariah deserves some credit for, number one: not passing out, number two: taking it all in so that he would be able to convey the message to others, and number three: actually becoming a big boy and stepping up to be God’s mouthpiece. Because, let’s face it, those last two would have many of us doubting what we saw and heard and fearing what people might think of us.

So, here we have this imperfect guy who has a heavenly encounter. I can only imagine how everything looked to Zechariah, having known only a life of banishment. How green, lush and 3-D those trees must have been! Keep in mind, myrtles in that time and region, were very different from what we know as Crepe Myrtles today. They were one of the largest trees, with their width growing equal to their height and, of course, those eye-catching, star-like blooms to boot. With their sweet scent and lush beauty, myrtle trees were foretold in restoration prophesies as growing in places of briars and thriving in desolate places – which was a sign of the Lord’s blessing on a cursed land (Isaiah 41:19/55:13). And these myrtles were just a symbol, a mere token, of the presence of Almighty God. They became a landmark of the places where God showed His overwhelming grace and His breathtaking faithfulness in the midst of the adulterous hearts of His people. They represented a place where God met His people right where they were: in the thick of hurt and healing, torn between fear and faith. He somehow, some way restored the deepest parts of their brokenness. Just as He did for them, He will do for us. Exactly what He offered to them, He offers to us. As Paul echoed, “Now to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine according to His power that is at work within us,” let us go….expectantly….among the myrtle trees.