Developing Roots: The Search for Substance

Today, in Science, we read about “roots” in a Botany textbook.

I was impressed to discover, that when roots cannot find adequate moisture and nutrients in the soil around them, it drives them to intelligently dig deeper and reach farther.

Historically, I’ve never been a plant person (I’m learning for the sake of my plant-loving child) but, I suppose I assumed that the direction of roots was simply gravitational or non-discriminate… that they just happen to furl out and extend every which way… but no.

Roots actually seek out what they need.

And when they can’t get what they need where they are, they drive down farther…

The spread out wider.

They move things to get where they need to be.

Maybe I’m a little sappy. I don’t know, but my eyes were kind of teary as I closed the textbook and moved onto the next subject.

I remember looking around a couple years ago and thinking…

“This can’t be right…”

Realizing with an ache that there was nothing there.

That in spite of all that was professed around me, as so “significant” and so “important” and so “deep” that there truly was no substance in it at all.

Hollow and confusing.

Contradicting and out-of-context.

Doctrines that toppled one another over. Ideas that were incompatible with one another. Practices that were the antithesis of Christianity.

There was nothing stable.

No where to stand with certainty.

1,000 tiny, subtle earthquakes, over time, left me anxious… fractured…

I was so shaken… I remember reaching for my Bible and my whole arm shaking because I was terrified I’d misinterpret it…

It said one thing… they said another…

While I grew closer to Christ, it seemed as if everyone around me was screaming that I was drifting farther…

I tried desperately to reconcile the inconsistencies…

Back then, it mattered so much to me what people thought.

I needed their validation.

But service after service, I was bombarded by thoughts and opinions and ideologies that would tear down all I knew was true. I felt certain in those days, with so many conflicting voices swirling around me, that I would lose my mind.

It’s only by the grace of God that I didn’t.

I remember begging the Lord, back then, for solid ground… for the stability I knew was within legitimate Christianity… to be like a tree planted by the waters, that would not be moved…

I didn’t want to live in a rootless Christianity…

I wanted to find the substance…

All of my life, I had heard I could stand on His Word, and I lived for decades by that principle…. But by this point, I realized that so much of His Word had been misrepresented… skewed… It seemed impossible to pick apart the lies from the truth, but I knew there was only one way to do it.

I had to seek His help.

So I poured myself into His Word… Terrified of myself… knowing I could be wrong about anything, but fixing my eyes solidly upon Him… doing the hard work to understand it accurately…

As I began to understand His Word better, my roots moved on from the shallow surface of approval…

They pushed beyond layers of rejection.

They ignored the nutrient void teachings all around me and pushed through all that diminished and obscured my view of Christ…

I sought Him and I clung to Him…

And while I was clinging to Christ with every fiber of my being, the entire landscape of my life changed.

All the things a person normally anchors themselves in or takes for granted dissolved.

Washed away.

I didn’t have a group of people or a place, or a denomination to anchor in… I didn’t have health, or a set of upcoming circumstances to hang my hat on… Even my identity had become mangled, as I grappled with aspects of myself that were so fixated in temporal things. Parts of my history that were once integral toppled with the realization that they had been anchored in what wasn’t sound.

Every aspect of my life was in the air.

All in upheaval.

All uncertain…

But Christ was certain.

He was the One thing that I knew was certain…

So I dug on and I sought Him…

And I took hold of what His Word said and left the crumbling, shifting sand behind…

And you know… one day I realized there just aren’t many winds that intimidate me anymore.

Certainly none of those things that once did.

I’m not afraid of tomorrow. Or of what a thousand people think.

It doesn’t frighten me that there are people who think I am in darkness because I’m not among them, or have declared me “lost” because I’ve rejected their teachings.

I’m not afraid of not having it all figured out. I’m comfortable saying, “I don’t know.”

I don’t need validation from people to stand on what the Word of God says…

That panicky, approval/rejection-driven girl disappeared

Roots.

They made their way out of the surface and deep into the riches of His Word.

They found His attributes.

They found His work.

They found the beauty of His teachings.

They found what will never pass away.

They found precious doctrines that weave into each other and strengthen one another…

The more I read, the more confident I became…

All of that stuff, that rides on the surface… it gets washed away in the first storm… but deep… settled deep in Christ, the storm is just… kind of a soft noise in the distance above. It doesn’t really matter… because you’re established in Him.

You know, with certainty, eternal things that eliminate temporal concerns.

So I looked back… and I realize just how clear it is, that He heard my feeble, desperate prayer…

He heard me cry out for stability, for the anchor of all anchors… and He answered it.

He didn’t just plop me in a perfect setting where I wouldn’t have to worry about howling winds…

No…

He made the conditions just right, to send me searching for more…

To send me digging deeper and deeper.

And that’s why my eyes were teary as I closed my son’s textbook this morning.

He cares about us…

To be honest, I’m still navigating some unknowns… but they don’t make me uncomfortable anymore.

I know Christ.

I know I am His.

And I know there are no roots like roots that are fixed in Him.