Why Can't I Be Like a Tree?

The trees in my city are in full bloom. White and pink puffiness with bursts of green popping though make it look I'm visiting another world. It's beautiful.

[caption id="attachment_460" align="alignnone" width="604"] Photo Credit: Manuel73 via Compfight cc[/caption]

These trees, they just do what they were made to do. They don't ponder their purpose and get trapped in worrying that they're not good enough. Trees just do what they're made to do in each season of their life giving glory to the Creator and shade to creation.

But I'm not a tree. I ponder my purpose and I get trapped n worrying that I'm not good enough. It's part of being human.

It doesn't mean that I don't give glory to my Creator, even when I feel like I'm not moving in any direction. I'm never really stuck. I am  constantly being transformed, even on the cellular level. It can feel like nothing is moving, or seem as though you're just missing the boat. It can be easy to feel that success is a phantom lurking behind corners that I will never round.

It is not so, though. Success, according to dictionary.com, is the achievement of one's goals.

So what happens if we shift our goals?

What if our goals aren't wrapped up in how we look or what we do but in who we are.

Even better, what if our goals were centered on who we were created by. 

"So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you." Romans 12:2 - The Message

I love this passage from Romans in almost any translation I read it, but today I really love it from The Message. "Don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking." Yes and amen. Without intention the world can take us by the hand and lead us down all sorts of crazy roads. Before you know it you'll be thinking that without products A, B, and C plus $xxx in your bank account you're a loser. Even worse, without intention we can start thinking we're the ones responsible for the blooming, that if we don't do all the doing it won't get done.

I may not be a tree, but focusing on God can help me be like those trees I'm watching bloom. I can do what I was created to do in a way that is authentic and just as beautiful. How it looks to the world just doesn't matter. What size jeans I wear doesn't matter. What my husband does for a living doesn't matter. What my kids do with their lives doesn't matter.

What matters is being changed from the inside out and I cannot do that, we cannot do that, if we are stuck in the world's way of thinking. Do not conform to the pattern of this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. The world is full of have-to's and shoulds, but our Maker has nothing but grace to offer. We leave our shoulds and have-to's at the door and enter into a relationship that offers nothing but acceptance of right where we are. 

Be a misfit. It's a command.