Redeem

I love to walk.  One of the chief features I looked for when buying a house in Williamsburg was a good place to walk.  In Norfolk I used to walk beside the Lafayette River and in Chicago I enjoyed walking beside Lake Michigan.  The walk I take in Williamsburg is closer to traffic than I would prefer, but there are also lots of trees, trees that I love and that I watch change from season to season, trees that mark the route and serve as companions on the way.  A couple of years ago I saw a crew taking down one big, beautiful old tree - I think it was some kind of an oak.  I felt so sad to see it go.  Maybe it was sick or had been struck by lightening.  I will never know.

At any rate, time passed, and as I kept walking the same route, I noticed that someone had begun planting flowers in the stump of the tree.  What had been a sad, dead, lonely old stump  had become a source of life and color.  I broke out in a smile of delight at such an unexpected gift.  Someone tends the stump flowers all summer, and by July you can hardly tell that there is a stump there underneath the vibrant plants and flowers.  Reminds me a bit of the Shel Silverstein book, The Giving Tree.  A few days ago, I was finally able to get out and walk after this long winter of snow and cold, and there was new life once again growing out of the stump. Pansies and the leaves of the daffodils that are yet to come.  I couldn't resist taking a quick picture.  There is another stump not far away; its tree was felled by one of the hurricanes.  Someone has begun planting flowers in it as well.

Redemption.  For me, those tenderly nurtured plantings have redeemed the loss of the tree.  Where once there is death, now there is life.  Spring is the same for me - it redeems the long, cold days of winter.  So many times when I am faced with questions of why God causes things to happen, I simply have no answer.  I'm not sure if God caused the tree to get sick and die so that it would need to be cut down.  I'm not sure that God decided the hurricane would take out certain trees.  What I am sure of is that God redeems things.  I have seen it again and again.  The resurrection redeeming the cross.  New life redeeming death.  Hope and joy returning where there had once been despair and pain.  Over and over I have watched God redeem things that I never thought possible.  I believe that God can and will redeem everything - though I will most likely not be around to see it happen.  That's the hard part.  I want it all to be redeemed right now.

PlanetRecovery wants to be part of the redeeming process.  Redeeming time and missed opportunities that have been lost to the disease of addiction.  Redeeming lives.  We want to help people find hope and health and restore that to the earth as well.  Last summer when visiting Maine, I saw a sign for a Redemption Center.  I thought it was some kind of church.  Ha!  The joke was on me.  It's a center for recycling.  Redeeming that which is seen to be trash.  Have you heard the phrase, "God didn't make no junk"?  I believe it's true.  No human life is trash.  Nothing is lost.  God will redeem it all.  Just like the flowers in the tree stump.  I wonder how many ways we can find to participate in the redeeming process.  I imagine the number is limitless.