BEND DON’T BREAK
BEND DON’T BREAK
R
ecently I was driving to Eunice, Louisiana to visit our students while they were at summer camp. The week before I took highway 190, and so simply for variety sake I took I-10 for this particular trip. The Mississippi River has hit new record heights, and and I was curious to see how high the water was
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the world, at its most powerful stage. The other thing that I couldn’t ignore was how effective the levees are at containing, and ultimately controlling the waters of the river. I stopped at the Atchafalaya Welcome Center to stretch my legs and grab a bag of sunflower seeds. I noticed a worker tending the garden there, and stoped to observe how he meticulously, and tenderly guided and wrapped the vines around the trellis he was working with. He unwound some and had to bend others as he wrapped them around the framework. Redirecting. Reshaping. Restructuring. The tender of the garden shaping the branches of the vine around the structure of the trellis, creating something beautiful. But it wasn’t the other way around. The branches of the vine didn’t dictate the position of the trellis, or ignore the tending of the gardener. It reminded me of a quote that I had read only days before from Elisabeth Elliot, “We must quit bending the Word to suit our situation. It is we who must be bent to that Word.”
The Bible tells us that Jesus is the We must quit bending the Word to suit our situ-true vine, Christians are the branches, and God himself is the gardener. ation. It is we who must be bent to that Word.”The thought of God bending us to conform to his will can seem… well and how close it was to topping the lepainful, and maybe a little restricting. vees. It was definitely a sight to be seen. But when I watched that gardener If you know much about a river in flood at the welcome center treat the vine stage, you know how incredibly powerwith such care and tenderness, it ful (and perilous) it can be. Looking at didn’t seem so harsh anymore. And, the Mississippi as I crossed the bridge when I realize that it’s the rigid strucI realized that I was 175-ish feet directly ture of the trellis that causes the vine above one of the most powerful rivers in to grow into something beautiful, it
LIVEOAKCHURCH | www.loumc.org | July 2019
