Redwoods

Seeing the redwoods in northern California has long been on my bucket list! Did you know that, despite their massive size, their roots are only around five feet deep? The roots of the redwood trees intertwine and often fuse together. Because of their underground connectedness, they are able to withstand natural fires, floods, and harsh winds. With only humans as their threat to survival, they endure for ages.

Because of the reliance on the redwood root system, they could never survive as a single tree. The key to their survival and growth is interdependence. Like the redwoods, we cannot survive alone. People require community. We need others to help us resolve life problems, to share our strengths, and to accomplish things that we could never do on our own. We need community to thrive.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my alone time with God. A personal relationship with Jesus is important, but there’s a whole lot more to our faith than that. We need others to challenge our thoughts and to carry us through when our faith is lacking. Being together allows us to listen for how God is speaking to us… not just ourselves. In Worship at Lamb of God, we are not just individual people gathering together to have a one-on-one encounter with God. No, we are spiritually connected to the people next to us. Our faith is an interconnected root system.

Christ is calling us into deeper community with one another. As Christians, we must resist the corrosive allure of isolationism. When we have deceived ourselves into thinking that we don’t need others, we let toxicity creep in. Or worse, when we begin thinking that we are better off alone, we are self-destructing. Likewise, when a logger cuts down one redwood, the remaining trees become less healthy and often cannot survive.

I do understand the fear of trusting the goodwill of others. I get the resistance to change and the reluctance to take the risk of trying to build a relationship with someone new. But my friends, our survival requires a leap of faith. Is it risky? Sure, but the alternative is death. We need each other in order to survive. Embracing the gifts of those who are different is vital to our success. Love is not diminished when we welcome new people into the fold, it is multiplied.

When we hear voices that tell us that we should go it alone and stay divided, God calls us to knot our roots into even tighter bonds. With Christ as our anchor, we stand strong together against the fires that race towards us or the floods that threaten to wash us away. Our strength when we are united is the lesson to be learned from the mighty redwoods.

We are one,

Pastor Lucas

Photo by Nils Rasmusson