LIFE FROM DEATH

**A quick note: I have been fighting a bad cold recently. Sorry to have missed the remainder of the Wisdom books but we jump back in with the prophets.**

The country will look like pine and oak forest with every tree cut down--Every tree a stump, a huge field of stumps. But there's a holy seed in those stumps. (Isaiah 6:13, MSG)

Today the social worker at the nursing home asked me for the most special moment of my life.

The question made me think of what accomplishments could I celebrate? And the answer is--very few. My accomplishment has come in surviving a difficult life.

(My answer? The birth of my granddaughter nine months after my daughter's death, and the publication of my first book.)

When I read about the "huge field of stumps," I thought about that conversation. If all of my dreams pictured trees reaching to the sky, what remains are stumps. My family--stripped of my till-death husband and one of my two children. Music--not a career and now no longer a ministry. Writing--a tree, perhaps, but more like a seedling than a tree in California's Redwood Forest.

Dreams stunted by health and events and age.

But that isn't the final word.

God tells Isaiah that He is going to empty Israel. That even if a tenth is left, those will be removed as well--leaving stumps out of what was once a great forest.

But in those stumps--a holy seed rests. The stumps aren't dead. Out of their death, a new life grows.

Kind of like Jordan's birth, and then Isaiah. Jordan, born a full pregnancy after Jolene's death. Isaiah, born seven months after my mother passed away.

A seed, ready to fall into the ground, to grow to fullness. Kind of like The Lion King's circle of life.

Another reminder of God's grace. God's holy seed rests in me, ready to sprout to new growth. My roots will grow deeper in him. My trunk will grow taller--stronger, and more like Christ. My branches will spread outward, to other people. There will be fruit ready for picking for others. They will grow strong--and in term, a new holy seed is planted in them.

The circles will continue to ripple through death and beyond.

Amen.