Okay so before starting this blog I wrote on xanga. I've got a blog to share with you guys, but in order to fully understand and appreciate it I have to make sure you've all read some previous blogs of my from xanga. So below are two thoughts that originally were posted on xanga and I'll post the new blog in the next day or two.

PREPARING FOR WINTER

I love living in the part of Kansas that has trees. Topeka is full of trees. As one resident said the other day, "the trees in town are more beautiful than the trees out of town." I had come back to the church today from lunch before realizing that I didn't have the van keys which I needed to return to their place before assembly tonight. So I drove back across town to my apartment. While on my way through the neighborhood around the church building I saw this tree with pure red-orange leaves all the same shade. The majority of the leaves had already fallen to the ground creating a blanket surrounding the base of the tree. There were only a few leaves left on the branches near the bottom of the tree. What a beautiful site it was. It got me thinking, why is it that trees shed all of their "protection" when preparing for the winter cold? So often when we go through winters in our lives we quickly gather in all our "protection" to try and hide from the deathly chill that surrounds us. And then I pictured myself before God. I'm standing there trying to grasp at each leaf as it falls from around me. Obviously I can't keep up. God just shakes his head. In the end I've got a handful of dead leaves that are no longer doing me any good. Then I pictured myself standing before God much like the tree I had seen. I'm before him, almost completely bare as he gently removes one by one the things I before was so desperately grasping for. Spilled all around my feet are those things that I thought would protect me from the trouble ahead. My hands are empty so that I can grasp the hand God is reaching out to me. Come next spring I suspect, just as it has happened year after year, that tree will be growing a fresh set of green leaves, blooming anew. I too can look forward to a fresh beginning, a season of sunnier days. But in order for me to make it through the winter, I need to be willing to strip myself bare before my God so that He can breathe that new life into me.

THE WEIGHT OF WINTER

This past week Topeka and the surrounding areas suffered a pretty bad ice storm (not quite the devastation in Oklahoma). As I drove around town I noticed how cool the trees looked as that were incased in ice, making them look like crystal sculptures. But what really took my attention was that those trees which had failed to drop all of their leaves before the ice storm weren't beautiful sculptures, but rather they looked overburdened and wilted; many of them with fallen branches and others that bend so low they were laying on the ground. The trees lacked the strength to hold them selves up and it was not because of the ice. For as you looked around the other trees seemed fine holding the weight of the ice that was frozen to their bare branches. Rather it was the presence of leaves and the added weight of ice that they collected which cause these trees to be unable to bare the load. So often we resist the times when God seems to be taking away from us the things we love the most, stripping us of those things that we think are so important. Jesus says, "I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful." (John 15:1 & 2) If we resist the pruning of the Lord, we too may end up caring a greater load than we can bear. For only the Lord knows what lies ahead and we may be headed for an ice storm for which we need to prepare by lightening the load in our lives.