Romans 12:2

There once was a rabbi who took a piece of dry wood and told his disciples, "Water this until it bears fruit." How bizarre, perhaps even cruel, an instruction that seems. Yet, how often does life seem very much like watering dead wood?


A woman, once, met with me about her marriage. She and her husband had been together more than 30 years and raised two kids. Now her feelings of empty nest, coupled with a kind of all-too-familiar routine in the marriage left her feeling as if her life had grown stale. She had no reason or, for that matter, desire for divorce. She just wanted hear her pastor encourage her to continue nurturing her marriage. She was watering dead wood.


A man came to me because he was discouraged with his career, not a mid-life crisis, just an increasing sense of despair that the last 25 years in his chosen profession were meaningless. The enthusiasm and ambition he once had for his work was gone, and he felt as if he had become nothing more than a puppet. He was watering dead wood.


There have been many times in my life that I can look back and identify with this notion of watering dead wood...watering with tears, and very little hope. Can you relate?


But, I can also identify times when those tears gave way to new life emerging out from what seemed like dead wood.


St. Paul had to know what it was like to water dead wood. By the time he wrote this dynamic verse in Romans he had been through decades of missionary work, suffered through prison, beatings, rejections, the Corinthians' rebelliousness, and the Jerusalem council. And through it all, over the span of a career, he continued to nurture the Christian faith for those first believers. Paul had to know what it was like to water dead wood. Yet, at the end of his life, he did not write about despair or hopelessness. He wrote to encourage transformation.


With enough water, new life emerges...even from dead wood.


May you, this day, be transformed by the renewal of your mind.
Heavenly Father, your grace moves us forward when we feel unable to go another step.  Encourage us, this day, by the promise of renewal in our minds that we may discern your will for us and follow.  Amen