When Roots Reach Deeper Water

Reflecting on the Journey

Over the years the way I look at the world, process the prophetic, and understand my walk with God has gone through a number of revolutions, paradigm shifts, and all-out transitions.

Some of those were gentle shifts while others felt more like earthquakes. There’s time I feel like I am on a  journey like that of Much Afraid in Hinds’ Feet on High Places — winding paths, unexpected turns, steep places, valleys, and stretches where it seemed as though the road itself was moving in the opposite direction than I thought we were headed. Yet, when I look back, I can say something with confidence that I may not have been able to say with the same depth years ago: He has always been leading me. I knew that then. I simply know it more deeply now.

Many of us experience seasons where Christ begins revealing something but we don’t have a grip on exactly what it is, at least not yet. It reminds me of Isaiah 43:19 “Behold, I will do a new thing, Now it shall spring forth; Shall you not know it?...”

Sometimes God is already at work long before we have language for what He is doing. I have felt like that lately. Sometimes the thing He is revealing comes in ways we haven’t seen before so it’s hard for us to perceive that what is going on is God related. And sometimes it comes through Scripture. Sometimes through suffering. Sometimes through years of questions sitting just beneath the surface until something suddenly cracks them open and we suddenly see it with greater clarity. 

Those moments can be beautiful, but they can also be unsettling. Greater clarity often has a way of causing us to look backward and reevaluate the road we have traveled. We discover something beautiful in Christ and suddenly begin questioning our whole journey. We wonder whether we somehow missed the road entirely. “How did I not see this before?” In those moments we question our understanding, our growth, our decisions, and sometimes even our experiences with God along the way.

I’ve been asking myself those questions a lot lately. I’m in a season where I have been seriously considering removing the years of writing and blogging that are behind me because so much within has been completely reframed. Everything has shifted. The lens through which I interpreted my journey has changed. I find myself stumped at what it means for everything that came before. Then verse 18 of Isaiah 43 comes to mind: “Do not remember the former things, Nor consider the things of old.”

I’m glad that statement comes before God begins speaking about doing something new. There is almost a sense of God saying, “Don’t stare at the old thing while I am revealing something new.” I almost hear it with a New York accent: “fuhgeddaboudit.”  I don’t know that I’ll be able to read Isaiah with a straight face again. Okay, moving on. 

Seriously though, it has only been over this past week that the new thing has begun settling in such a way that I can feel that nothing is collapsing underneath me after all. Maybe my roots were simply reaching deeper water. And if I have roots, I might resemble a tree. But I’m getting ahead of myself. 

The Fear of Reframing

There is a fear that rises up during seasons of reframing. We discover something deeper and unconsciously assume that whatever came before it now has to be discarded. We look at our history and treat is as though it were little more than a series of mistakes interrupted by occasional moments of clarity.

We can have a knee jerk reaction that makes us feel like we have to start over entirely. The urge is to tear everything down and rebuild from the beginning. We assume that this new deeper understanding must mean that our previous understanding had no value. Almost like we were wrong all that time. We act as though every new season requires us to uproot ourselves. But that would be like uprooting a tree. And trees do not survive through repeated uprooting. They survive because unseen things continue taking place beneath the surface. 

Not every reframing requires abandoning what came before. Sometimes reframing simply reveals that the roots were already reaching toward something deeper than we realized.

Once I started noticing it, I began seeing this imagery everywhere in Scripture.

“…to grant to those who mourn in Zion— to give them a beautiful headdress instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the garment of praise instead of a faint spirit; that they may be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that he may be glorified.” Isaiah 61:3 ESV

Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers; but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers. Psalm 1:1-3

“Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord. He is like a tree planted by water, that sends out its roots by the stream, and does not fear when heat comes, for its leaves remain green, and is not anxious in the year of drought, for it does not cease to bear fruit.” Jeremiah 17:7-8 ESV

The righteous flourish like the palm tree and grow like a cedar in Lebanon. They are planted in the house of the Lord; they flourish in the courts of our God. They still bear fruit in old age; they are ever full of sap and green, to declare that the Lord is upright; he is my rock, and there is no unrighteousness in him. Psalm 92:12-15

The Language of Trees

The phrase “oaks of righteousness” appears in Isaiah 61:3, where those who mourn in Zion are promised restoration—gladness instead of mourning and praise instead of despair—so that they may be called oaks of righteousness, “the planting of the LORD.”

Before you get weirded out by the idea of righteousness and even remotely consider that this isn’t referring to you, think again. Through faith in Messiah Jesus we are clothed with the righteousness of God. 

For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. 2 Corinthians 5:21 (ESV)

…and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith— Philippians 3:9 (ESV)

God does not describe His people as frantically striving to survive. He describes them as planted.

Jeremiah speaks of roots reaching toward water even during seasons of drought. Psalm 1 pictures a tree planted beside streams that continues bearing fruit in its season. Psalm 92 speaks of lives that remain green and fruitful even in old age.

There is something fitting about the image of an oak. We think of strength, endurance, and something that has remained standing through seasons of strong winds and harsh weather.

The picture is remarkably consistent. Life is not sustained through striving. Strength is not self-produced. Fruitfulness does not emerge from anxiety. Something beneath the surface continues supplying life.

I think this might be what Isaiah means when he calls them “oaks of righteousness,” the planting of the Lord. Their stability is not self-created. Their roots simply continue receiving what God Himself provides.

When Mature Roots Reach for Water

The thought of this reminded me of the mature trees that line the streets of our residential community. Their grandeur was developed into the majestic beauties they are today.  Their branches stretch out wide. Their trunks are thick and sturdy. There stature shows their endurance and stability. Their mere presence makes a neighborhood feel established. They stand as sentries, faithful guardians of the watch.

A few years back, the sewer line that serviced our home was interrupted by one of those stately sentinels. Her roots had found their way into the old terracotta pipes beneath the ground. Those clay pipes can last a century or more. Despite their enduring nature they were no match when compared to the determination of that old oak to seek and find water. The repairs that followed were both extensive and expensive.

Hepzi, short for Hephzibah as I have affectionately dubbed her, did not invade those pipes to be intentionally destructive. She was not calculating her way through the seams just to tear something apart. The old girl was simply doing what comes naturally. Mature trees require more than surface moisture. Out of survival they reach deeper. They have to continue moving toward the only thing that will sustain their lives. Their roots must keep search out for the deeper water needed to endure. I can relate with ol’ Hepzi.

Some of our own seasons of spiritual reframing can feel just as disruptive. They seem to tear through the clay pots of life that have serviced and sustained and helped move us through life. Deeper growth in Christ can feel equally as unsettling when it presses against the structures and ways of thinking that have carried us for years. And yes, it can feel like everything underneath us is breaking apart. 

When what we thought we knew gets shaken sometimes the language changes. As understanding deepens that alone can leave us feeling uncertain. Then we start questioning. 

Maybe that is why this has been hitting so close to home lately.

Reframed

Looking back with new eye I see I’ve been going through something like this myself. I’ll bet others have been as well. I feel like I have been completely reframed. And I’ve been questioning. I didn’t know what to do with everything that had come before. Years of writing, studying, and processing suddenly felt as though they were crumbling ground beneath me. I wondered whether I had somehow missed something entirely. How could I have been so blind? Why didn’t I see this sooner. Why didn’t I simply make the connection. It’s not like I didn’t know this. But I didn’t. Not like this. Not at this depth.

I know I am not alone. I’d venture to say that most mature believers have walked through seasons like this where God, by His Spirit opens scripture in ways we hadn’t seen that way before. When our long-held assumptions get confronted and something in us has to shift. Even the language that was once familiar doesn’t fit anymore. What we understood through a very particular lens can’t be used because we are seeing things differently now. I can’t go back to my old bifocals. They don’t make anything clear. I have to use my new prescription. Only with the new lens can I see things as they are. 

When the shift started happening for me, I was temptation to reinterpret everything that came before through the language of failure. I began asking myself questions that carried a great deal of weight. Was I wrong? Did I miss something? Had I been building wrong? Had I wasted seven years of building the wrong structure? And worse, was what I was teaching wrong all along?

The more questioned the more I wondered whether we often interpret these moments through the wrong framework. We easily assume that because our understanding has deepened, everything that came before it was somehow failure. We assume that because our sight has become clearer, everything before clarity was darkness. But that simply isn’t true.

When I look back on my journey, I do not see a time when Christ was absent from earlier seasons of my life. I do not see years of wandering without purpose. I do not see a series of disjointed paths where one road failed and another suddenly appeared.

Christ Is Faithfully Leading

I see Him in the seasons when I understood less than I do now. I see Him in the questions that remained unanswered. I see Him in the places where I reached for language but did not fully possess it yet. I see Him in the seasons where I could only make out outlines of realities I would later understand with greater depth. I was seeing dimly, as in a mirror. But now I see more clearly. 

I knew He was leading me then. I simply know it more deeply now. And perhaps that is all that has changed. Not His faithfulness. Not His presence. Not His leading. Perhaps what changed was depth.

Perhaps some who are reading this find themselves standing in a place where everything feels as though it is shifting beneath the surface. You may be looking backward and wondering what to do with years behind you. 

The reality is not that everything behind you was wasted but that Christ has been leading you all along.

Perhaps the water did not suddenly appear, but the roots have simply reached it more fully.

Perhaps the roots are simply doing what roots have always done:

reaching toward life.