They are like trees along a riverbank bearing luscious fruit each season without fail. Their leaves shall never wither, and all they do shall prosper.
Psalm 1:3
Do you feel as if you are producing “luscious” fruit in EVERY season without fail?
I know I don’t!
Some days I feel “withered”, dried up, lost, impatient, drowning… wondering what has darkened my JOY? WHO turned the lights out?!
It is in those seasons, those moments, that I know I am suffering from ROOT ROT.
Root rot is a condition in which the roots of a plant or tree begin to decay. Some indicators that that YOU may be suffering from root rot might be a lack of or desire for personal growth, feelings of anxiety and worry about life, especially FUTURE events, allowing the stress (STORMS) of life to overwhelm your here and now, to steal your JOY. These stressors are like a fungus, slowly killing your spirit.
A tree with strong roots, laughs at storms.
Malay Proverb
Healthy roots cultivate a healthy plant! They are prepared for the storms of life. Botanists define plant stress as “ a state where a plant is growing in non-ideal growth conditions and has increased demands put on it.” It has been shown that healthy plants, with healthy roots, recover from many of those stressors.
Healthy ROOTS can influence the growth and well being of the entire plant. I read that “biologists have recently discovered that roots actually secrete compounds that affect the microorganisms in the soil, doing things like helping protect the plant from disease and encouraging it to absorb nutrients from the soil.” I LOVE THAT!
Roots are the LIFELINE of a plant.
The same is true for us! Our roots will PROTECT us from “disease” and ENCOURAGE us to “absorb” TRUTH and LIGHT. If we invest in caring for our roots, anchoring, cultivating and pruning them, the same will be true for us.
When we look at plants and trees, we mostly value them for the part we can see the part that adds beauty to our garden and home. But “beauty” begins deep in the roots. The same is true for people.
What fruits do you want to see in your life? Are you strengthening your roots? We often strive for the “fruits” that society values - beauty, wealth, success. But these fruits are not reflective of strong, faithful, anchored roots.
I want to grow the fruits of “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control”. (Gal.5:22-23)
The root is our inner soul, our spirit. We need to nourish, nurture, feed our soul to prevent root rot. It is interesting to note that the first symptoms of root rot occur BENEATH the soil. We can appear, by our fruits, to be healthy. But if one were to dig deeper into our soul they would see pain, the worry, the fears that are slowly killing our root, our spirit. Often with plants, by the time it is obvious that root rot is affecting the plant, the symptoms are more difficult to heal.
For us, there is always HOPE.
By sowing the seeds of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control in our soul, we destroy the damaging affects of root rot from our spirit.
Love is faith's flower, hope is its stem. Grace comes into us by faith, like water through the roots of a tree. It rises in us by hope, like sap rising through the trunk of a tree.
Peter Kreeft