Classic from 2004
Burning Bush Devotional
07 March 2020
Tumbleweeds
For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height-- to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. - Ephesians 3:14-19 NKJV.
As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, rooted and built up in Him and established in the faith, as you have been taught, abounding in it with thanksgiving. - Colossians 2:6-7 NKJV.
For this devotional to work you must have a basic knowledge of tumbleweeds. In the dictionary, tumbleweed is defined as “Any of various densely branched annual plants, such as amaranth and Russian thistle, that break off from the roots at the end of the growing season and are rolled about by the wind.” DesertUsa.com says about tumbleweeds, “Virtually everyone recognizes the mature Russian thistle, which looks like the skeleton of a normal shrub. Plants may be as small as a soccer ball or as large as a Volkswagen beetle.”
If you have ever run into one of those tumbleweeds the size of a Volkswagen, you will know that this can be serious. This morning (November 2004) I drove to Amarillo, Texas on I-40 about 120 miles from my home to visit a woman having surgery. Every mile or so another tumbleweed would roll, spin, or bounce across my path. Sometimes cars or trucks would strike the weeds and once I was unable to miss a spinning weed that came into the path of my car.
What makes a tumbleweed a tumbleweed is that it has been detached from its roots. As a result, the weed has nothing to hold it in place, nothing to keep it from aimlessly rolling, and bouncing at the mercy of the wind. It is a picture of a person without Christ or of a Christian that has failed to grow in Christ and put down roots.
We can look at the lives of many people and see that their lives resemble the path of a tumbleweed. Sadly, these people are pushed this way and that by life. They spin and tumble never having anything to keep them in place or give them stability. They have no roots, or their roots are very shallow. Psalm 1 describes such a person, “The ungodly are…like the chaff which the wind drives away.”
The child of God is to be “rooted and grounded in love,” and we are to be “rooted and built up in Him and established in the faith.” Psalm 1 tells us of such a person, “Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the path of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful; but his delight is in the law of the LORD, and in His law he meditates day and night. He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that brings forth its fruit in its season, whose leaf also shall not wither; and whatever he does shall prosper.”
Which kind of person are you? Which kind do you want to be? Are you “like the chaff which the wind drives away?” Or, are you “like a tree planted” by the river of living waters with your roots growing deeper and deeper?
Copyright © 2004 - 2020. Ed Wrather. The Burning Bush website has been online since January 31, 1998. On June 8, 1998 the email version of the Burning Bush Devotional was first sent. Ed Wrather began writing devotionals in the early 1990s. The distribution of those first devotionals was primarily through the Burning Bush Newsletter sent to prison facilities throughout the United States and Canada.
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