The Tree of Life
Whenever I enter someone's home for the first time, I can't help but observe. I notice what they get to see when they look out of their windows. Their decorations. Pictures. I'm not a tour guy. I don't need to snoop around their private spaces. But I imagine what it might be like to live there; sometimes I like that idea. Other times I don't.
Not long ago I was invited into the apartment of a family who is among the upper-middle class of our city. Their building had a doorman, and their elevator opened up just to their apartment, which had a fantastic view of the city, by the way. Their coffee table included books from all the places they've lived over the years: Rio, Buenos Aires, and Miami to name a few. They loved to host, and they were good at it too, making for a nice evening for a group of couples.
As I was driving home, though, I thought about my visit to a quite different home earlier that week. I was delivering a microwave to a family that lost everything in the flooding here, and then, even worse, their house caught on fire. As I walked up to their place with a microwave in hand, I could still smell the smoke and ash. The entire upper floor was gone, and now the family of five was trying to stuff themselves into half a home, probably just 500 square feet for all of them. No place for guests. No view. No coffee table. No books.
And in between those two places is my home. Our apartment building doesn't have a doorman, but we also haven't had fires or floods. It's not just our home that's this way because our life as a missionary family always seems to be in the middle. We somehow always seem to be in the middle of moving, not remembering which continent has what things. We are also in the middle of worlds as we don't quite fit in here, but we've adapted enough that we're more Brazilian than we used to be. But less American too. And this makes my mind wander.
My imagination doesn't just fire up when I imagine living in someone else's home. I often imagine living in variations of my own home, but not here. It's usually somewhere back in the States. It could be a place I never actually lived, but just a tangent of what my life could have been, were things different. Had I made money in my twenties instead of being a career student. Had I found a higher-paying job than being a pastor then a missionary in my thirties and now forties. Had I stayed in my hometown or had I layed down roots somewhere, anywhere. Had my father not died. It's easy for me to become jealous. I interact with friends and hear about how they are settled, owning or building homes, living near a network of family and friends. It's the good life with healthy roots.
But roots are stubborn creatures. There's a kind of tree that grows here that splinters at its base into hundreds of roots that are happy to explode all over the ground before digging their way into the soil. It's quite a sight to behold. And these roots are strong. They bust through concrete and asphalt, recognizing no boundaries. And up top these trees are giant, hovering over everything else with a network of trunks and branches sustained by giant, thick, almost-plastic-looking leaves. In a city with millions of trees, these are my favorite ones to pass by because I notice their roots first.
The Tree of Life
The first psalm is a brilliant introduction into the church's oldest and best songbook to God. Before all the shouts of praise, cries of lament, and outbursts of being puzzled at our fallen world that is seemingly full of traps, enemies, and suffering, the first psalm sets the stage by reminding us how God nourishes us. We get to be like the best kinds of trees, with the deepest kinds of roots, bearing the best and juiciest fruits. It's always our season, and there are blessings there.
Without naming it specifically, the tree in the first psalm resembles the Tree of Life. Like Chekov's gun, the Tree of Life shows up in the beginning of our story as humans. It's a symbol of a covenant - so potent that when sin's corruption hits, the tree must be guarded at all costs. But what does the tree actually do? We are not told at the beginning of the story, then the tree is seemingly forgotten until the book of Proverbs talks about it a few times, including this verse: "Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life" (13:12 NIV).
Oftentimes my hopes seem deferred. My oldest child is navigating life alone, but ironically in my hometown, in the States. I am preparing to send two more kids to the States in the next few years. My heart gets sick just thinking about it. But, then, this isn't unique to me. As Christians who are redeemed, but not yet glorified, living in this fallen, but not yet made new world, all of us are longing for our deferred hope to one day be fulfilled.
Fulfillment is exactly how the biblical story works back in the Tree of Life. John says in Revelation: "Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be any curse" (22:1-3a NIV). That's what it's for!
Sometimes I feel cursed to forever be stuck in the middle. But it's not really a curse. It's a blessed opportunity to force my roots to break through the concrete and asphalts of crossing cultures, splitting up my family, and simultaneously saying goodbye and hello to a home. The first word of that first psalm, after all, is "Blessed."
I'm not cursed to be in the middle; I'm blessed. All the while, I know in my deepest of hearts that God has revealed to me my real home, and it's not in my imagination. It's not even in Kansas City. It's New Jerusalem. And until I walk those streets my heart will likely remain a little sick. But I also smile knowing I won't be walking those streets alone.