It was a Staff Retreat, right? In July, thinking ahead to fall and our common work at Salem. “Bring your Bible, a pencil, and a note pad.” Thus far predictable. “We’ll meet at church at 9:00 and go together to Silverwood Park for a couple of hours.” Why there, I wondered, away from all the ministry surroundings so central to our work at Salem? We were soon to find out.
Arriving on a lovely, warm, and breezy day at our destination nearby, we walked a bit to a sheltered area on a hill overlooking lovely Silver Lake surrounding us on several sides. Our pastor lead us in a morning prayer, after which we read several psalms, each reading a verse out loud from whatever version we had brought. It was all about how God is to be praised in all of his creation, by all of his creatures.
Salem’s theme over the last several years has centered on Drawing, Developing, and Deploying Disciples Devoted to Jesus Christ. Setting before us the scene in Acts 2:42-47, our pastor then offered a few random thoughts on what that looked like in the early church, asking us to reflect a bit also on how it might impact what we are seeking to do at Salem.
Then he asked us to go off by ourselves for an hour or so to observe our surroundings and reflect on the following: one thing in nature that brings glory to God and why; one thing in ourself that does the same;, and one thing about Salem that makes God smile as it too brings glory to him.
Before returning we were to ask ourselves what our observing might mean personally for us in our life as a human being, as well as what its implications might be for our specific role in ministry this year at Salem.
I was not prepared for this kind of retreat, fully agended as most such staff meetings have been in my experience. But gathering my thermos of coffee and a water bottle I had also brought along I took off to a shadowed tree nearby, looking for something on which to fix my gaze as I sat down to reflect. What I saw was the tree before you now, and what I wrote about that tree and about myself and about Salem and our common ministry follows.
I see a tree, all bent out of shape, leaning every which way. trunk and limb somewhat directionless, hardly thriving, yet bearing green leaves nonetheless--obviously still being fed from nourishing roots in watered soil.
The tree is not growing straight like most trees, partly because it is too close to flowing water, i.e. it is being shaped by the flow surrounding rather than by how it was meant to be shaped as a thing in itself.
At the same time I hear a wind blowing and feel its gentle influence on my body and brow. It is a warm wind, as if sent from God, yearning to bless the tree and heal its brokenness, if not in fact its stance.
I too am a tree, alive yet and green, even at my advanced age. For all my brokenness, bent out of shape but not out of mind, I too am sprouting green, feeling the warmth of God’s gentle wind and enjoying his presence.
Could it be that in my weakness is my strength? Is this tree a living reminder that it is to brokenness and disarray in people’s lives that I am called, those who for whatever reason have not yet felt the presence of God in the warm breeze, nor even sensed their need of him?
Salem, like the tree and like me, is not uniform either. Its branches and leaves are in many ways random too, like all of humanity save for the warm winds of God over time that have gathered it as a community of faith and gather it still.
Lord, open us all to embrace our humanity, our essential brokenness in sin and need, and heal us of all our efforts to save and justify ourselves. Ride toward us on the gentle, warm winds of your Spirit and do a new thing among us.
Make me to be an instrument in the hands of that wind, a shaping tool in your mighty hand to sustain life in its brokenness, bloom where I am planted, and bring glory to your name.
On rising to return to the shelter I noticed that our pastor was nestled on a limb of the same tree reaching out over the water. As he descended from his perch we reflected together on how that tree had drawn both of us to itself. And faces aglow, we were reminded--as were others of our staff in their own later reflections--that God is indeed everywhere, and that ministering for him must always proceed first from the glow of his presence in us and ministry to us.
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