I was specially referring myself to a royal palm tree growing up on a hot city sidewalk in Managua, Nicaragua. Then, just 2 days later, in El Salvador, I did receive from my friends a series of pictures showing the damages and desolation brought by Hurricane Ike to the City of Galveston, Texas, and interestingly enough, idyllic ones from many beautiful places around the world.
I will not say surprisingly but coincidentally in all of them royal palm trees were somehow at the center of the stage in all of them. And then again, in just another 24 hours passing lapse, invited by my oldest son to a men´s spiritual retreat, I found myself enjoying being a guest in a very special place by a lake after driving through highways, paved and unpaved roads, flanked by luxuriant vegetation and houses of every thinkable type
Comments´ sharing was abundant while passing by opulent residences, more than bungalows, where even in one of them 2 helicopters were seen parked as they were milkmen bicycles. And all this happened side by side if not on the other side of the road of humble dwellings where young and old people placidly watched us driving by on our way to the place where worship songs would resound all day long in joyful brokenness before our God, Savior and Lord.
What immediately raised my awareness of a very special coming day and impressed me the most was seeing palms after more palm trees all along the roads, as the one in my hot and humid native country.
They transmitted to my mind and my spirit the sequence of the real reason for their existence not only in the material environment but also in the spiritual one that in just some minutes would transport us both inside our inner communion with our Lord as out into the harmonious connection of the Mother Nature and its Creator.
The message was the awareness of the imperious need to transcend our tribulations, circumstances and peer pressures, paying more careful attention so we could learn the transmitted lesson that was being pounded on me by the palm trees with disregard to any specific space, time, opportunity or reason.
And I went to the internet and found myriads of reports and pictures showing palms resisting every imaginable type of adverse circumstances. And I could not do anything more than remember the male children and adolescents I had left behind.
I could not do anything more than pray all day long asking the Lord to turn them into responsible young adults and men so in their due time they could worship Him as was being done by all the males that surrounded me in that place of placid and joyful time of submission, exultation and worship.
And I kept on praying while seeing all the brokenness, the unction and the healing of so many weaknesses, afflictions and suffering that abounded all around.
My reflections from this moment on will be primordially graphic, in the hope and desire to take you through the sequence of images and sounds with this message:
Yes, it can be done! Yes, we can overcome turning ourselves into the men our present or future families need! Yes, it can be done! Nothing is impossible for God! Nothing is impossible if we walk with the Lord side by side, in a closer daily walk with Him!
Because when the storms wreck our lives?
When the hurricanes flatten down and destroy all our human deeds and little treasures?
Where could we go but to The Lord?
Give yourselves up to The Lord and turn yourselves into Palm Trees! They are not just a scenic part of idyllic scenarios!
Face the crisis as they do when the hurricanes try to bring them down!
Persevere and Survive! Even more… More than just surviving plant yourselves on your spiritual feet and conquer!
The Lord will be at your side in the crisis and He will be your strength in the Adversity and Disgrace!
Instead of resigning yourselves to be seen as the defeated and the victims change yourselves into living testimonies of His Grace and Mercy, poured upon you in the times of uncertainty, anguish and despair!
Wait upon the Lord! The time will come when you will be instead of just a promise of potentiality and growth…
You will become seeds and then ripe and luscious fruits filled with spiritual and cooling waters! As the coconuts of heavens as they are of the earth!
And then… in protective shading not only for your own blood and flesh but also for all those who will come to you as the bees come to the palm trees as the fountains of pollination and feeding!
So… in communion with God, your Creator, your Savior and your Lord, through your willing submission to Him and His Love and Discipline… !
You would be able to resist, supported by His Grace, all the hardships of life, and patiently and joyfully endure the afflicting stings of your carnal spirit and become the transforming instruments for those who will come to the shelter of your home during and after the insufferable blows of fortune or the uncontrollable breaking of the waves, the hurricanes and the storms of the worldly life!
1 comment:
I always imagined the tree of Psalm 1 / Jer 17 as an oak or maybe a cedar... but given the ubiquitous and diverse nature of Palm trees, I guess that I will take this tropical picture as a much better expression of the message.
Thanks!
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