Posts tagged tree

What do I have a GIVENNESS NOW to?

Not to the wrong tree.

“If you are familiar with the biblical narration, you will remember that there are two special trees in Eden - the tree of knowledge of good and evil and the tree of life.

We got the wrong tree.

We got knowledge and it hasn’t done us much good.”  John Eldredge, Knowing the Heart of God

Spirituality of the stump.







…the giving tree.

I have a GIVENNESS NOW not to the wrong tree.

What do I have a GIVENNESS NOW to?

The misery of me and not the tree.


“Man is so great that his greatness appears even in knowing himself to be miserable.

A tree has no sense of its misery.

It is true that to know we are miserable is to be miserable; but to know we are miserable is also to be great.  Thus all of the miseries of man prove his grandeur; they are the miseries of a dignified person, the miseries of a monarch.

What can this incessant craving and this impotence of attainment mean, unless there was once a happiness belonging to a man, of which only the faintest trace remain, in that void which he attempts to fill with everything within his reach?”  Blaise Pascal, Pensees

…to know we are miserable.

I have a GIVENNESS NOW to the misery of me and not the tree.

What do I have a GIVENNESS NOW to?

Adverse ascent after free fall.



“For though the upright falls seven times, he gets up again;

the wicked are the ones who stumble in adversity.” Proverbs 24:16



Falling. 

Again…and again…and again…and again…and again…and, again.



Many falls.

Fewer risings.



Failure or frailty?



Made whole in the hollow.

I am not absolved from adversity…nor do I apologize for it.

For it is then, when I ascend.




Completion by calamity.


Arise again!



I have a GIVENNESS NOW to adverse ascent after free fall.

What do I have a GIVENNESS NOW to?

A tree to remind thee.



“How splendid the cross of Christ. 

It brings life, not death; light, not darkness; paradise, not it’s loss. 

It is the wood on which the Lord, like a great warrior, was wounded in hands and feet and side, but healed thereby our wounds. 


A tree has destroyed us, a tree now brought us life.”  St. Theodore of Studios




Splendid.


Not it’s loss;

…a tree now brought us life.



To remind thee.




I have a GIVENNESS NOW to a tree to remind thee.