UPROOTING THE BAOBABS

In the children's book "The Little Prince," there is a scene where the rose asks the prince why he so carefully combs through the soil each day, diligently pulling up the baobab sprouts. The prince answers that baobab trees, if left to their own, will grow to be one of the biggest trees in the world. In order to protect the rose and keep their little planet alive, he cannot afford to let a baobab tree take root; otherwise it would consume their space and they would die.

Similarly, I've been finding it absolutely necessary to comb through the soil of my heart each day looking for any hints of "baobabs." Things like pride, envy and discontentment seem to lurk around constantly, waiting for me to let my guard down, waiting for the opportunity to take root. They just don't go away.

Thankfully, my faith is kept not by my own efforts, but by the grace of the One who saved me.

Avoid every kind of evil.
May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The one who calls you is faithful and he will do it.
~1 Thessalonians 5:22-24~

THE ONE WHO IS

Recently, I've been going through a devotional book called "Praying the Names of God" by Ann Spangler. It goes through 26 names of God in the Old Testament in chronological order of how God reveals Himself to us, one name per week. The first one is ELOHIM - God the Creator.

It's funny how God seems to orchestrate everything in life to go with a certain "message of the moment" though. The week I was learning about God as my creator, everything that came up seemed to remind me of it. And the whole week, I couldn't figure out why He wanted me to understand Him as Creator so much. At the end of the week, at a prayer time, I was feeling particularly frustrated at my apparent slow rate of growth.

God, why do you even care that I grow? Why are you so passionate about my development anyway? It's tiring, painful and what benefit does it give you?

Suddenly, I saw it: God as the Creator, delighting in His masterpiece(!) Just as I find joy and delight in drawing something and tweaking this part and changing that part, my God delights in the process of making me more like what He envisions me to be. Finally, I realized why God was trying to pound into my hard head the fact that He is the Creator. He IS the Creator. Not He was. Just because He created at the beginning, doesn't mean He stopped creating. God is still alive and at work, making new creations of all of us, redeeming the world one person at a time. What hope!

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!
~ 2 Corinthians 5:17~