Roots

I've been thinking a lot recently about living a rooted life... about living somewhere for generations... about one day being one of "Those Old Wherever Families." (You know, the ones with the connections, whose granddaddies and great-granddaddies were friends.)  Not because I want to be a "good ole boy", but because there is so much appeal to having Heritage and Place.  It's something I really deeply desire. 

Think "Gone with the Wind" --- "Tara! The red earth of Tara!" I want that perennially fixed Northern Star "homestead" which we and all our descendants will return to...

Anyway.... all that brings me to my present topic.... PLANTING.

I want to plant a garden.   I want to farm my back yard. 
BUT.... I can't really spend money doing something like that if we are going to be uprooted to move soon.  (Which is likely in my husband's current line of work.)  When we do stop moving, we will plant a garden. We will sink literal roots.

Which brings me to my philosophic thought.... ROOTS.

As all of the above was running through my head, the Bible verse Collossians 2:6-7 came to mind:
"Just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted & built up in him."

Suddenly the concept of being ROOTED took on so much more meaning...
Being ROOTED in Jesus implies that we are permanent.  The seasons will not move us. Good and bad weather may come... but we will tend the ground where we planted our roots.  He is that "perennially fixed North Star to which we all return."  He is our Heritage.  He is our Place. 

But it's more than that.... Look at the verse closely. It isn't Jesus who is rooted, right? It is us. "YOU... be rooted and built up IN him." He is doing the planting of me, rather I of him. Which means... HE planted this garden.   HE is not going to leave.  HE is fixing his home with ME.  In a way, I am HIS heritage ("heirs of the eternal kingdom").  I am HIS place. 

Maybe it seems simple to you, but it strikes me as profound.

Those are my Saturday night thoughts.

Cheers!
TheKawaMama
(By the way, I took this picture on a long drive home from spring break back in 2008... My then-boyfriend-now-husband was driving. I made him turn around in the middle of no-where and pull up to this house for me to take a picture. I told him it was my dream house...)