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A look at the end of life

A cool breeze blew through my open car door as I waited for my wife to complete her weeding of Church flowers. This is a good time to think of stories I want to create. I let ideas flood in, then decide what might be appropriate to write about. Today I thought, why not say something about death for we are all going to get there sometime. I had just experienced my own drama of trying to leave this world; I think it would be a good time to look at the end of life. Coming home from Colorado one year, we saw a strange, pathetic sight. Halfway up a twenty-foot scrub tree, the top was bent by the wind and was leaning Eastward almost at ninety degrees. On the East side, the tree was alive, on the west, there was nothing but dead, white, squiggly branches We marveled at this botanical sight wondering how a tree can be half dead and half alive? We could not answer that question, neither could I get that vision out of my mind. It just looked like Nature drew a line from top to bottom with life on one side and death on the other. Without intervention the tree will eventually die because no one wants to take the time and effort to help it. After all it is just an unwanted scrub-tree in the middle of no-where and does not have any way to save itself. In a similar manner this half/dead condition exists in Christians who are not fully planted in Christ. Some Christians are unaware that Spiritual growth takes continued care. Unlike this earthly tree, there is help for the wayward Christian. Without Christ we are in the middle of a world that wants to destroy us, not save us. The tree paints a picture of what the church has always been–just a building that houses sinners: half alive or half dead. Some are clinging to their own false theories that will die with them, others are alive and willing to change to save themselves. The task of the Church is to keep us from getting earthly infection in our Spiritual roots, lest we become a causality of our own foolishness. Unlike the helpless Scrub, Christians have a self-help group that can intervene if they want it. So my question is, do we know the conditions of our Godly roots?

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