To be rooted means that you have firmly established yourself in the source from which you receive strength.

Difficult family and ministry events took place, which were depleting my strength and shallowing up my faith. I was clinging to the insufficient promises of this world, leaving me uprooted, directionless, and personally disconnected to God. I wasn’t deeply rooted anymore.

To help me become rooted again I began to cultivate the practice of Sabbath. Sabbath is being attentive to God, as well as to yourself, so I needed to step away from the orientation, distractions, and confusion of the world in order to reorient my relationship with God. When I did that, soon my inner spirit began to settle, and as God’s steadfast love and promises were brought back into focus I felt I had made it home! Being attentive to God, beginning to know him again, helped me to remember the faithful and unfailing promises he offers to me, and believe me, I needed to hear that over and over again.

When I felt inadequate I remembered that God is my adequacy. He promises to always supply. When I felt weak, I remembered, he is my strength. He is sufficient! When I became weary and burdened I accepted his invitation to come and rest. And when my plans failed I clung to the promise that his plan is for good, and not for disaster.

So during this season of Lent; steal away for a moment, an hour, a day. Be attentive to God, remembering his promises for you. May this keep you rooted, steady, and strong as you deepen your relationship with God.

When I began to think on the theme “rooted,” these words from Isaiah spoke to me: “A shoot shall come up from the stump of Jesse and a branch will grow out of his roots.” I pictured an ax striking old tree again and again, until it finally falls, leaving just this stump.

Lent is about repentance, and a key metaphor for repentance is the cutting away of dead, damaged branches. It’s not my favorite image. But, in grace, God shows me what needs to be cut away—what in me must die. I serve in a community where there are many people who have been chopped down, so to speak. By poverty, mental illness, physical and emotional abuse—people judged and rejected for simply being who they are. By placing me here, God has rooted me in the pain of the world. And every day God calls me to be with these people in their pain and to see and use my privilege and power to serve these precious people. This is my dying and this is my rising.

And both are possible because “A shoot has come up from the stump of Jesse and a branch has grown out of its root.” Jesus came into the world to show us the beauty and power of a human life thoroughly rooted and grounded in God, and also thoroughly rooted and grounded in a world that cries out for redemption.

This is who God is. The one who creates the world and chooses to be rooted in its life. The one who gets down in our dirt and stays there. The one who is felled by the ax of human fear and hatred, then like a tender shoot springs to life again from the never-ending life and love of God. God is the deep root of the world’s life. The deep root of our being in Christ. The deep root in whom we die and rise, so that our dirty hearts become good soil for bringing forth the fruits of love and new life.