Cedar Trees

out and wanting to keep the wolves away. Not only will the fire keep the wolves at bay, but also it helps keep the shepherd warm at night.

The last cedar is the Tall Cedar – the best of the tall cedars can grow to 300 feet. That’s a pretty amazing tree. But more amazing still is it’s tap root. The tall cedar’s taproot is just as big going down and the tree is tall going up!

I noticed some correlation’s between tall cedars and our lives. Tall cedars grow more in the dark and in the cold. Oh, it grows in the sunlight, but most of its growth occurs in the dark. I know in my life, I’ve found myself growing closer to God in the dark, difficult times more often than in the good times. It seems to be human nature to grow closer to God during "experience 101". Our times of failure and struggle – that’s when God reveals himself to us in a new way and we grow closer to him.

Tall Cedars give off a sweet aroma. I’m not going to suggest that Christians smell different, but I’ve noticed that Christians do have that different something. It’s a special glow, aroma, whatever you might want to call it – people of the world can sense it, smell it if you will and it affects their lives as well.

My wife has a cedar chest. Maybe you have one, or maybe you have cedar-lined closets. It’s where you put valuable things you don’t want little critters to get at. That’s because parasites can’t kill tall cedars. Nothing bugs them! They have the same oil that the fire cedar has and bugs and moths can’t stand them.

I mentioned the tree’s taproot. Without that root, the tree would be out of balanced and would fall over at the slightest breeze. We too must be rooted. Rooted in church, rooted in ministry. Rooted in God’s word so we will be unmovable in times of trial and temptation.

At our home in Kankakee there was a small evergreen tree in the front yard. Our first summer there we planted a pretty big garden. One thing we planted was Zucchini. It seemed we had no longer planted the seed and we were harvesting squash. We froze so much Zucchini we finally threw it away years later. In the time the Zucchini was planted, grew and was harvested and then died, the evergreen in the front didn’t seem to grow an inch. In fact we lived at that house for seven plus years and it didn’t seem to grow at all!

If you want to be a squash for Jesus, you can accomplish it in about three weeks – but if you want to be a tall cedar for Jesus it takes years. God requires a long series of obedience to become a tall cedar. But if you’ll be obedient to God he will use you much the same way the Israelites use these mighty trees. You see the tall cedars were the pillars for the house of God.

Four cedars. Can you see yourself as one of these trees? How good a tree are you? Are you wilted and unproductive? Are you thinking, I may not be a cedar now, but with God’s help I’m gonna get growing.

Maybe you see yourself as one of these trees. If so, great! They’re all needed in the church. The great thing is we can actually be more than one tree at a time. We may excel at one thing, our gifting, but we can all function in each area.