Parable of an Azalea Bush

Parable of an Azalea Bush

         We've all been amazed at the devastation wrought by the wind in Alabama and elsewhere in the South.  This followed soon after the earthquakes and tsunami in Japan and the earthquake and aftershocks in Christchurch, New Zealand.  Destruction came so suddenly. 

    
         How do you prepare for the disasters of life in this fallen world?  In one sense you can't really "prepare" for them in the sense that you can take preparations like sandbagging a flooding river because you don't know what is going to hit you nor when.  But in another sense God prepares us for the traumas of life by building our strength little by little as He causes us to go through hardships and difficulties.  And He teaches us that He is in sovereign control not only of the weather but of every detail in life so that not a sparrow falls without the Father.  And thus we learn to rely on Him and not on ourselves or on other people.  We're thankful that God in His providence uses many human means to help us but when they fail, we know God is still there and still in control of everything.

        I saw an example of that principle a couple of weeks ago when I planted an azalea bush the day the winds started.  And they kept getting harder and more fierce and more persistent for many days.  And I looked out at the azalea bush, wondering how those flowers kept clinging  to the bush.  And I noticed how the wind bent the branches and behind the azalea bush the slender young maple tree bowed in front of the wind.

        And what was happening to that tree and that bush while they were being pushed and pushed by the wind? Well, below the ground, their root structure was developing  and in the formative months those roots grow stronger when they are subjected to strong winds because they have to hold tighter to the place where they're planted.  Look at the rugged hardy trees on a windswept coastal plane.  They bend in the wind but they hold their place.  So we, too, must have strength and stability as we endure the storms of life.  And we get that strength  from the Lord.  We go "from strength to strength" as we learn to depend on Him and cling to Him.  "Blessed is the man whose strength is in thee; in whose heart are the ways of them.  Who passing through the valley of Baca make it a well; the rain also filleth the pools.  They go from strength to strength, every one of them in Zion appeareth before God." Psalm 84:5-7

        Yesterday Timothy sent me an article by Charles Spurgeon that says much the same thing though he wrote it 150 years ago.  Read it and be strengthened for the storms of life.

Thinking of  Jeremiah 17:17 "Thou art my hope in the day of evil," Spurgeon wrote,

       "The path of the Christian is not always bright with sunshine; he has his seasons of darkness and of storm. True, it is written in God's Word, "Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace;" and it is a great truth, that religion is calculated to give a man happiness below as well as bliss above; but experience tells us that if the course of the just be "As the shining light that shineth more and more unto the perfect day," yet sometimes that light is eclipsed. At certain periods clouds cover the believer's sun, and he walks in darkness and sees no light. There are many who have rejoiced in the presence of God for a season; they have basked in the sunshine in the earlier stages of their Christian career; they have walked along the "green pastures" by the side of the "still waters," but suddenly they find the glorious sky is clouded; instead of the Land of Goshen they have to tread the sandy desert; in the place of sweet waters, they find troubled streams, bitter to their taste, and they say, "Surely, if I were a child of God, this would not happen." Oh! say not so, thou who art walking in darkness. The best of God's saints must drink the wormwood; the dearest of His children must bear the cross. No Christian has enjoyed perpetual prosperity; no believer can always keep his harp from the willows. Perhaps the Lord allotted you at first a smooth and unclouded path, because you were weak and timid. He tempered the wind to the shorn lamb, but now that you are stronger in the spiritual life, you must enter upon the riper and rougher experience of God's full-grown children. We need winds and tempests to exercise our faith, to tear off the rotten bough of self-dependence, and to root us more firmly in Christ. The day of evil reveals to us the value of our glorious hope." (emphasis added)        
                                                                       --Charles Spurgeon, 1834-1892