Grow Your Roots
April 3, 2024
“Your roots will grow down into God’s love and keep you strong. And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is.” Ephesians 3:17b-18 (NLT)
As I have grown older, the number of steps I take to remain healthy have increased. This week was new vitamin and medicine bottle week. I was frustrated spending three minutes wrestling to open the bottle of vitamins—twisting this way, peeling the stickers, and tugging tamper-proof seals. And then it struck me: the Tylenol poison guy hurt his victims and also cost society so much.
Events in 1982 (when I was 8) made national news when seven people died from using Tylenol laced with cyanide. Helen Jensen, a nurse who helped treat the first victims said of the suspect upon his death in 2023, “We lost our innocence. We have become less trusting of everyone else. We can blame it all on him. ... He was a terrorist and we have suffered from his terror for 40 years.”
And we know that’s true. Evil not only harms its initial victims but also creates trauma in those who learn of it and in the precautions taken to prevent it in the future. Think of the collective millions of hours spent opening over-the-counter medicines or waiting in airport security lines.
Our past relationships with friends, family, and even within faith circles can similarly impact us, especially if those were ever wounded by abuse, mistreatment, or simply lacked love. Similarly to societal terror, those individual misdeeds can cause lack of trust or limit you in future relationships.
It may be necessary to guard our lives from relationships that harm, but it’s not God’s will that past pain should keep you from experiencing his love or miss the love from those who follow Jesus. Imagine life if the fear of tampering kept one from taking the lifesaving medicine that’s readily available or if fear of travel kept one from ever getting up and out of the house.
Ephesians 3:17b-18 reads, “Your roots will grow down into God’s love and keep you strong. And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is.” (NLT)
Remaining guarded in all relationships is like uprooting your life and never getting planted in the soil required to nourish your life and faith. You may not survive, and you’ll never thrive!
For Christians, relationship with God begins with faith in Jesus, but your relationship with God grows by encountering his love from other people and through the love of God you share with other people. That’s one of the primary purposes of the church—to be rooted in soil (relationships) that grow your roots and being part of helping the roots of others to grow.
When we mess up, through word or deed, we are invited to repent and seek reconciliation with those we’ve hurt, to do the work to rebuild trust. When others have messed up with us, we’re invited to forgive, and, when supportive of physical, spiritual, and emotional health, engage in steps of restoration. We must also know, recall, and experience the love of God—and those who earnestly seek a relationship with Jesus. “Now all glory to God, who is able, through his mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think.” (Eph 4:20, NLT).
How’s your faith journey? Can I be helpful or pray for you in a specific way?