Thursday Devotional...5/9/13

 LEMONADE

I have a dwarf lemon tree in a big, round pot on my back deck. It is a Eureka lemon, the classic lemon that you would expect to find in the grocery store, and over the years, it has provided me with many glasses of fresh squeezed lemonade. I selected a dwarf tree so I could always reach the lemons and it would never outgrow its pot.

A few years ago, a large elm in the corner of our yard split in two and came down with a crash. It demolished our patio awning and flattened a table, chairs and a barbeque. The lemon tree took a direct hit and the impact broke off a third of the branches, leaving it lopsided and leaning over the side of the pot. The next spring, the little lemon sprouted back to life, sending branches in all kinds of crazy directions, trying to compensate for its missing side, almost like it was putting out arms to regain its balance.

On top of that, every few years we have a week or two of cold nights where we experience a “hard freeze,” meaning the temperature will remain low enough, long enough, to kill plants. So, after dinner, I brace myself against the cold and go out on the patio to set up a tent of old sheets and blankets over the lemon tree. But something always manages to frustrate my efforts when during the night, one of the poles blows over or a heavy dew falls and the sheets can’t support the weight causing them to slip and expose the tender leaves to the cold.  

On those cold mornings, after unsheathing the tree, I find dead branches and leaves, usually only in one area, giving more imbalance to the tree’s appearance.

Just before sprig arrives, in an effort to restore the tree’s dignity, I take my hand pruners and snip off the dead branches and trim the long side shorter. But when I am done it looks more chopped up and uneven than ever, similar to when a four-year-old uses play scissors to cut a dolls hair.

And, then during our annual summer vacation, pieces of the tree wither and die in the heat with no one around to water it. I usually come home to crispy leaves and shriveled, half-grown lemons on the ground.

This morning I was out watering and looking at the tree. It is again embracing another spring with large new leaves. It continues to produce fruit in all stages with full size lemons waiting to be harvested, new blossoms for the soon-to-be-lemons, and small green baby lemons just beginning to develop.

I am amazed at how the old lemons are hanging on, some at the ends of long, scraggly, leafless branches. The new blossoms are sprouting at the joints where living tree meets dead wood, and baby lemons are popping up close to the trunk and all the way to the far tips of the new growth.

I think my life resembles the lemon tree. Catastrophic events happen that tear my life, shred my heart and reshape me. I don’t look, or feel, balanced anymore and I strive for stability by growing a few branches in that direction.

Freezes come and go to relationships, doing random damage and making pruning necessary. And sometimes, the heat of life dries up my best intentions and most hopeful dreams.

But I will keep going and keep growing. That’s what I was designed to do, just like that’s what the little tree was designed to do. We both have an inner force compelling us to live and keep going and growing, even when we are faced with the harshest destruction. The tree is created that way because God placed a survival mode in its DNA code, to grow and produce fruit at all costs.

We are created that way when we put our faith in God’s son Jesus to save us from our sins. God plants hope and faith in our spiritual DNA and from that point on we will keep going and keep growing by understanding that He is with every step in this life and even beyond the grave into the next.

 

Most blessed is the man who believes in, trusts in,

and relies on the Lord,
and whose hope and confidence the Lord is.

For he shall be like a tree planted by the water

that spreads out its roots by the river;
and it shall not see and fear when heat comes;

but its leaf shall be green.
It shall not be anxious and full of care

in the year of drought, nor shall it cease yielding fruit.

Jeremiah 17:7-8
(Amplified Bible - AMP)

Written by 

Jody Ward