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God does not wish for us to stand stubborn like the autumn oak tree, cloaked in a façade of protection – our truest, most authentic selves obscured beneath a tangled bramble of false security. God desires for us to live like the Japanese maple tree, our true essence revealed and flourishing, our truest self front and center, secure and thriving. We know from Scripture that God yearns for us to live wholeheartedly and truthfully as the unique, beautiful, beloved individuals God created us to be. Most of all, God’s deepest desire is for us to know God’s deep, abiding love for us, and to root our whole selves in the divine like a tree rooted beside a stream.
As you begin to relinquish, open up and allow God to prune you open from the inside out, you will grow in ways you never imagined. Your true, essential self, the you uniquely created by God, is there, deep inside you, hidden beneath layer upon layer of leaves. Like the elegant Japanese maple, a spacious place and an exuberant life is waiting to unfurl and blossom in you.
This message is excerpted from “Pruning open” by Michelle Derusha in the January/February 2021 Gather magazine. Today we commemorate the Martyrs of Japan, 1597.