Thank you for rooted love

Jo Black February 16, 2025 7 1

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Jeremiah 17: 5-10 (NRSVA)

5 

Thus says the Lord:
Cursed are those who trust in mere mortals
    and make mere flesh their strength,
    whose hearts turn away from the Lord.

6 

They shall be like a shrub in the desert,
    and shall not see when relief comes.
They shall live in the parched places of the wilderness,
    in an uninhabited salt land.

7 

Blessed are those who trust in the Lord,
    whose trust is the Lord.

8 

They shall be like a tree planted by water,
    sending out its roots by the stream.
It shall not fear when heat comes,
    and its leaves shall stay green;
in the year of drought it is not anxious,
    and it does not cease to bear fruit.

9 

The heart is devious above all else;
    it is perverse—
    who can understand it?

10 

I the Lord test the mind
    and search the heart,
to give to all according to their ways,
    according to the fruit of their doings.

Bryophytes, which include mosses, are an unusual family of plants that don’t require roots to grow. They just stick on and see what happens. As handy as this may sound, it does mean that they are, more than many living things, totally subject to surface level conditions. In other words, they are restricted to the damp, the dreich (to use the Scots word) and the dreary to survive.

Living rootlessly can be a hard way to get by as humans too, simply hoping that the objects and situations we happen to have attached ourselves to will suffice to give us the love we are seeking. We aren’t designed to ‘just get by’ when it comes to love yet we often live as if the scraps that our circumstances throw us are all we are made for.

I am so thankful that we are not stuck with being “love mosses”! When God is our provider of love we can get dug into a source that sustains us through the days of spiritual sunshine, steadies us in the hurricanes of life’s turbulence and gives us confidence (verse 7). The production of fruit in our lives doesn’t have to be fuelled by our own finite reserves but instead the love and strength we need can be sourced, in faith, from His bottomless provision. 

Drink deeply of his love today friends. He made you to be rooted in. And roots deeply secured in Him will lead to a harvest that will draw others to His stream. 

Prayer:

Lord give me confidence and determination today to dig deeply into your love

With roots that would give anything or anyone looking to dig me up palpitations

No surface-living-scrounging for me Lord

But satisfying gulps of all you have to offer for all you would have me be and do.

Thank you, Jesus.

Amen