Real Life

In Wisconsin, along with preparing for Thanksgiving and the holiday season comes the annual gun deer season. Many a conversation around the Thanksgiving feast inevitably begins with, “Did you get your deer?” I’ve begun answering with the cliché that it’s called “hunting” and not “getting” for a reason and it’s the getting away and not the getting that is valuable to me. Pretty good excuses anyway. The trophy wall I can see in my mind of the ones that got away from me over the years is pretty impressive but it still doesn’t discourage me from heading to the woods each year with family to share and laugh and tell stories and dream a little.

I get lots of time to think too. To appreciate, to prioritize, to evaluate, to pray and to hear from the Lord in those quiet times; it’s a time to hit the reset button in my mind, my heart, and my life. I have begun looking for more than deer while out there too. In the beginning, God created man from the dust of the ground out in the wilderness and then made a garden and placed him in that cultivated and groomed place. I believe there is a time for doing the work a man is given and a time for adventuring out into the wilderness for a closer look at the big picture of life – even deer season has become more than about deer for me!

While out in the woods walking with my father, we came upon a cedar swamp with full grown trees rooted in the rotted stumps of their predecessors. You could see that the former trees were once huge and had been logged off a long time ago. The sun rays were shining through the branches; you could smell the cedar in the air, and we both looked at these new trees coming out of the cut-off stumps and thought the same thing – that it looks exactly like what God had said about Christ coming though the lineage of David as king but it would stop there and a new thing would begin; the very thing God had been up to all along.

It is found in the book of Isaiah 11:1-4 Out of the stump of David’s family will grow a shoot – yes, a new Branch bearing fruit from the old root. And the Spirit of the Lord will rest upon him – the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. He will delight in obeying the Lord. He will not judge by appearance nor make a decision based on hearsay. He will give justice to the poor and make fair decisions for the exploited.

Well, this made me think about my own life too. How many of us feel like we’ve been cut down at some point in life, or wounded in a way that hinders us from growing? Oh, it may have been a hurt from a friend, or a loss, or a dream that was crushed, or a disappointment, or our own sinfulness. Our kids may not be doing what we thought they would be doing, our parents may need us more than we can find time for, our bills may be piling up, or our retirement shrinking due to the current economic situation. We pray, we give, we do church, and we say we believe, we claim faith, we keep on keeping on with what we should be doing to be counted among the faithful, but it sometimes seems like it’s going nowhere. I submit that we are getting good at putting on spiritual clothes and walking around playing the role of a Christian, or Jesus followers, but when it gets down to the reality of it all we are finding it difficult to apply it to the life we have right in front of us every day. I am thinking we are getting our walking around this earth life mixed up with our real life!

Here’s the missing piece: 2 Corinthians 5:17 “…those who become Christians become new persons. They are not the same anymore, for the old life is gone. A new life has begun!” Paul also said that we died when Christ died, and our real life is hidden with Christ in God (Colossians 3:3). I can see my old life as that stump, the stump is still there – anyone can see it; but my real life that is by Christ is a new tree growing healthy and alive the way he wants it growing because it comes from his life.

So, I’m looking at the old, rotted, cut down stump of a cedar tree that was once healthy and vibrant and growing. The old stump then became a place for the new tree to take root and begin a new life of its own. And if I were to apply that to my own life I can see that as a Christian I am no longer supposed to continue the old life but begin a new life. I am still me, I still have the same dreams and skills and circumstances as before but they are a place for the new life that comes with Christ to take root and make the new life I can live. “I am crucified with Christ. I myself no longer live, but Christ lives in me. So I live my life in this earthly body by trusting in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” (Galatians 2:19b-20)