Today’s
picture is of the seed of a Giant Sequoia.
Can you imagine? That tiny
seed contains within it everything needed to grow into one of the most
incredible examples of all vegetation on planet earth.
Out
of that seed can grow a tree pushing 300’ high, 115 in circumference and
52,000 cubic feet in volume.
Every
time you look at a manger scene and see that Baby (the other stuff is nice but
it’s about the Baby!), you are looking at the Creator of hundreds of billions
of galaxies, each containing hundreds of billions of stars, created over a
period of 14 billion years. You are
looking at the Creator who, breaking the first law of thermodynamics by creating
matter and energy, created matter and energy smaller than the size of needle
point containing within it everything that exists in our universe and beyond.
You are looking at the God who exploded it into being and then 10 billion
years later created life out of non-life.
You are looking at this Creator who descended endlessly through his
created world, bringing all of it with him, contained in a sense within Himself,
and descending from the Greatest to the smallest, having entered planet earth
entering into a people He had chosen, sifted, refined and purged, descending
further into one of that nation’s teenage daughters at prayer, only to descend
further, becoming a small primitive mass of cells within her, yet containing the
history of the world and of this broken planet and its population all within
Himself.
But
His descent was not finished. As
Supreme Goodness met a fractured and hurting world, that very world that he came
to save killed Him. So God
descended further to the most ruined part of his creation, death itself.
Amazingly that appears to have been His plan all along.
Glory, the reveled Goodness of God, became manifest,
"The
hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. I tell you the truth,
unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single
seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.” John 12:23-24 (NIV)
unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single
seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.” John 12:23-24 (NIV)
The
corpse was buried, the seed was planted, only to do what seeds are created to do
. . . . .it grew. With
its resurrection, with the bodily resurrection of Jesus to the throne room of
the universe, God brought all of creation up, up, up and up with Him, not in the
sense of location but in the sense of a brand new redeemed, renewed, repaired,
regenerated, restored New Life for all of creation including us humans who were
created in His Image.
The
Bible typically speaks of all of this
in the past tense, as a fait accompli
even though from our perspective we’re living in the “yet, but not yet’.
The
life spans of Sequoia’s can approach 3,000 years.
We humans (and the damage we have done to each other and to our planet)
must be a really tough bunch to get resurrected judging from the 2,000 years
God’s been at it so far. On the
other hand if it takes a sequoia 3,000 years to get to where it’s meant to be
to be, well, we’re only beginning our millennium.
Maybe we’re actually right on schedule!
As
for me I’m hoping that Jesus grows me up a little bit faster in the coming
years than I have allowed Him to in my previous (certain # of) years.
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