Day 20 Chopping

 We have owned a small house in Lisburn for the past 20 years and rented it out to lots of lovely people who were in need of a home.  Over the years we have done a bit of work to the house, but the back 'garden' has been severely neglected.  I say ' garden' because its actually a space 12 ft wide by about 20 feet long on a very steep slope and it is separated from the house by a lane.  So its not a useful space and none of our tenants have ever used it. Consequently the rhododendron bushes which form the border between the back of the garden and the common green space behind it have grown into massive trees. Ive looked at them over the past few years and known we really should cut them back but.....

Anyhow, on Friday we took a chainsaw and set about chopping them down to size.  Keith loves a good power tool so he was happy hacking away at the trunks and I was hauling branches out of the way and pointing out which limbs needed lopping off next.  The weather was fine and it was quite good fun in a destructive sort of way.

As we took five to have a rest a verse jumped into mind

The axe is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.” Luke 3;9  Matthew 3;10

Now, like you Ive heard that verse a few times before and taken from it what you have taken from it and moved on.  But today I suddenly had a thought about trees and axes.  We were using a chainsaw on tree trunks that were no more than a foot thick.  And it was not as easy as you might have thought.  It still took time and skill to slice through the wood.  But of course compared with using a handsaw it was child's play. And a handsaw would have been less effort than using an axe.  I started to think about that verse in Luke in the context of Jesus's times.  John the Baptist who spoke those words would presumably have been well aware of the effort it would have taken to chop down a tree with an axe.  Im not a lumberjack so I decided to Google to find out more.  Here's what I discovered

If you cut down a tree at the trunk and leave the roots in the ground the roots can live for quite a while.

So you need to get to the roots.  And a tree can survive even if 1/3 of its roots are destroyed, so you have to get them all.   To cut the roots with an axe you first have to dig down round the tree, possibly to get to roots which can go down 20 feet.  Thats alot of digging before you even start with the axe.  And then you have to hack away at the biggest roots first , swinging in the bottom of a hole in the dirt.  Its hard work and it takes time.

John the Baptist was warning people that they were planted in the wrong soil, growing the wrong fruit and that God was coming with judgement. Repent. If you dont change your ways God will come and dig around everything that makes you stable and cut off everything that keeps you standing. He will cut off your food supply and you will die. It will be a long hard process.  Jesus too talks about cutting down trees in Matthew 7 ;18   A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Cut down with an axe and alot of effort.

So where are my ramblings taking me today?  Well maybe its just the thought that repentance is a process which is hard work and dirty and messy and takes longer than you'd think.  As is pruning and refining.  We can so often read scripture through the lens of our modern living and forget what the words might have meant at the time of writing.  No chainsaws in 33AD. And in heaven only trees that are planted by streams of living water and whose leaves are for the healing of the nations.