i am a tree

OK, before you start thinking that I'm still on the muscle relaxants (mentioned last post), I'm not. Nor is the title of this post some existential wandering in my mind.   The truth is, there is a song that has been much in my mind and heart this past week, and the line that resonates with me is this:

He is jealous for me.

Loves like a hurricane, I am a tree,

bending beneath the weight of his wind and mercy.

To give proper credit, the song is "How he loves", written by JohnMark McMillan, and popularized by the David Crowder band.  We have sung it just a few times in worship at our church, and I didn't even realize that I had internalized the lyrics until I awoke last Thursday with the words in my mind and mouth.  Thursday was that impossibly windy, rainy (10 inches!), blustery day last week when two tropical storms collided and gave all of their moisture to us here on the east coast.  So the words were fitting to the picture outside my bedroom window when I awoke, and throughout that whole day.  And they have stayed with me over the past five days, through my days of back pain (much better now), and today as I face some unexpected changes at work...that initially drove me to that common and easy emotion: FEAR. 

Today it was as if God was challenging me: what will you allow to sway you (that tree in the wind thing again): your fear, or your trust in Me?  I would rather be the tree bending to Him: His will, His love, His mercy.  Otherwise I just bend under the weight of my selfish fears, and that kind of weight will only cause these fragile limbs to break.  His hurricane love, on the other hand, may bend me, and may change me, but if I am strongly rooted (in Him) then there is no fear that I cannot withstand it.  Today I will choose not to fear, I will choose to TRUST. Because, as the song's chorus reminds me again and again:

He loves us. Oh, how He loves us.