Tall Like a Tree

"Oh, I get it!" I thought one day several years ago (sometime after fifty) as I surveyed in the bathroom mirror the downward drift of my face--sag under my eyes, drooping along my jaw line, jiggle behind my chin, and generally everything unamusingly dropping just a little. "I get it! It's the earth; it's gravity! It's the dust my body is made from unable to hold out against earth's magnetism; the earth is pulling my body."

For days after that, I thought about how youth is the season of life when the human body is coursing with the vibrant power of life, and cannot help but sing, twirl, skip, hop, leap, run, climb, and believe in flying and all other kinds of miracles. Life's force is anti-gravity, kept from floating off into space by earth's magnetism, but otherwise inspiring every kind of upward movement, from ascending musical scales to a spring in the step, from ballet and trapeze art and hang gliding and gliding birds to flying pole vaulters and skiers and parkour champions, from soaring architecture to even the smallest smile, defying gravity to lift our faces.

I became sharply aware of the very real difference between body and spirit, a difference that in our youth is sometimes hard to discern, but becomes more undeniably apparent with the years, that the body is one thing, the spirit is most definitely another, and our final outcome depends ultimately on which was the stronger during their inseparable bond in the earth-life.

And so my already great appreciation for the keen perceptivity of Paul's words in II Corinthians 4, about the outward, the physical, fading but the spirit within expanding with an increasing wealth, an immeasurable "weight of glory", became exponentially fuller, as I could see so up close and personal the reality of the "dustness" of these bodies.

Listening as my brother-in-law read through a psalm one day recently with my family, a familiar passage suddenly jumped into fresh imagery, "...the path of the upright." UPRIGHT! There again was a reference to the relationship between gravity and our spirit. Good straight posture of heart and soul, embodied in a word that when I checked it out has nearly a hundred references to the character of God or man in the scriptures.

I have always been drawn to trees, and to the woods, filled with their strong vertical trunks by the hundreds and thousands and tens of thousands, with crowns reaching for the light. This perfect straightness repeated countlessly, this light-focus, fascinates and intrigues me and somehow calls to my spirit.

Our God and Creator who is over the heavens has so planned and designed our world that from birth we are surrounded by invitations to look UPward, and thereby more possibly, with adjusted perspective, see ourselves in right relationship with our surroundings and our God. A dear friend asked me recently what really is the difference between the believer and the principled unbeliever. As I pondered the question, I could see that one very great difference is this upward focus, this vertical relationship with the eternally transcendent God.

It is the call of Jesus when He taught us to pray as He did, "Our Father WHO ART IN HEAVEN". In these words Jesus led us, in the immediacy and urgent press of our lateral circumstances and need, before all else to turn our eyes Upward, away from our surroundings to HIM.

It is this Upwardly focused living that makes us Upright in heart and life. In a world that pulls our souls toward earth, the upward call keeps us from being spiritually bent, disfigured, bowed down with cares and worries, heedlessness, narcissism, and distorted perspective. Think of the imagery of the psalmist's words, "Why are you cast down, O my soul?..." (with worry and discouragement). And his equally symbolic words to the Lord that "You are my glory, and the LIFTER OF MY HEAD" (Psalm 3). Think of the very physical effects of what the scriptures call the "deeds of the flesh" (the "dust" part of us) versus the "fruit of the Spirit (the upwardly attentive part of us) listed in Galatians 5. Jesus said, "Be on guard, that your hearts may not be weighted down..." The "dust-deeds", the dominance of the "dust" part of us, leave people--both the perpetrators and the victims--bowed down, heavy hearted, vengeance focused, oppressed, and stuck in dead ends and vicious cycles, while "Spirit-fruit" creates health, well-being, buoyancy, balance, and uprightness.

Without this uprightness that naturally occurs by our Light-reaching, our Upward-facing, we develop sicknesses of soul, perversions and twistedness and dysfunction, often without even being aware. The haphazardly straying path of lost sheep who have each gone off to their own way becomes our lot when every man does what is right in his own eyes, without the lifelong benefit of Heaven's GPS, giving us our bearings and a true equilibrium through our proper relatedness to Earth and Heaven, feet on the ground and head uplifted; gravity and Antigravity in a beautiful tension of rootedness and upwardly propelling force of eternal life.

Therein lies the transcendence that truly counterbalances the impact of earth's suffering and sadness, its pull to bitterness and resentment, hopelessness, unbelief, and eternal death, instead pulling us upright, as the sight of a lone bird flying overhead in the Nazi death camps strengthened Betsy ten Boom to remember that the evil surrounding her was not the only or final reality.

The God who is entirely upright in all His ways, calls us and causes us to stand upright, our lives on earth in these dust-bodies filled with grace and glory and upward mobility in the most literal sense of the word, because of the One who is the LIFTER of our heads.

Think of all the ways He speaks to us, calling us from living low, earthbound lives, confined under a ceiling, pointing us upward, lightward, heavenward in spirit! Majestic mountains, plunging waterfalls, soaring birds, towering clouds, geese in formation, starry night skies, the compelling drama of sunrises and sunsets all call us to know our smallness in contrast to what is infinitely higher and more vast than we are; not to diminish our significance but to give us a sense of the GREATNESS in which we are wrapped. Even the waters that cover the majority of earth's surface were created with reflective properties, neverendingly reflecting the sky.

Of these natural testimonies to our God, the psalmist wrote:

"The heavens are telling of the glory of God;

And their expanse is declaring the work of His hands.

Day to day pours forth speech,

And night to night reveals knowledge.

There is no speech, nor are there words;

Their voice is not heard.

[Yet] Their sound has gone out through all the earth,

And their utterances to the end of the world..." (from Psalm 19)

What a tragedy (and a travesty) it is that some would so misperceive God's call to worship to be evidence of an ego gone out of control, with an insatiable lust for flattery. The phrase repeated again and again through much of the Old Testament, "before the Lord", as well as the injunction to "know" that He is King of the earth, straightens our posture, relieves us of the weight of unabated earthiness, and calls us to remember what is glorious and eternally true.

"To Thee, O Lord, I lift up my soul. O my God, in Thee I trust." (Psalm 25:1,2)

"Hear the voice of my supplications when I cry to Thee for help, when I lift up my hands toward Thy holy sanctuary." (Psalm 28:2)

"...to Thee, O Lord, I lift up my soul." (Psalm 86:4)

"And I shall lift up my hands to Thy commandments, which I love..." (Psalm 119:48

"I meditate on all Thy doings; I muse on the work of Thy hands. I stretch out my hands to Thee; my soul longs for Thee..." (Psalm 143:5,6)

"Teach me the way in which I should walk; for to Thee I lift up my soul." (Psalm 143:8)

"TO THEE I LIFT UP MY EYES,

O Thou who art enthroned in the heavens!

Behold, as the eyes of servants look to the hand of their master,

As the eyes of a maid to the hand of her mistress;

So our eyes look to the Lord our God." (Psalm 123:1,2)

When come even the darkest of days foretold for the earth, Jesus, in anticipation of those days gave us our life-instruction to "straighten up and LIFT UP YOUR HEADS, because your redemption is drawing near"!! (Luke 21:28)

And so I carry on with great delight in smiling freely, letting the force of life prevail, streeeetching my waking dust-body, lifting high my hands in praise like the uplifted branches of the trees, climbing up into the windowed cupola of this house, turning my thoughts and my spirit to heaven, and day and night lifting up my eyes and my heart to the skies and beyond, to the Eternal One enthroned in the heavens. We and the trees, in the pleasant company of the upright, stand rooted in the earth, ever reaching for the sky! And one great day, gravity will give way to a great and final trumpet blast.