Branching Out

Behold, the Man whose name is the BRANCH! From His place He shall branch out, and He shall build the temple of the Lord; yes, He shall build the temple of the Lord. He shall bear the glory, and shall sit and rule on His throne; so He shall be a priest on His throne, and the counsel of peace shall be between them both.

~ Zechariah 6:12-13 (KJV)

When I was a child, my mother planted a red-leaf maple in the side yard between the triangle of pines and the tire swing tree. It seemed but a twig at first, all stuck in the ground and spindly-like.

“You watch. It’ll grow,” Momma said.

And it did.

The first year, there were not many leaves. Momma took me by the hand and showed me the red stems. Even though I didn’t understand why anyone would call it a red leaf maple when just the stems were colored, I still liked that I knew the name and that I could see the stems and be right in the naming of it.

That fall, the name made more sense. It was as if God had reached down and squeezed those stems like a tube of paint, pushing all the color onto each palette of leaf. When the leaves dropped to the ground, the pile was small. But with the passing years, the tree grew, the branches spread. The leaves pushed out. Each spring generations of robins made their homes there. Each summer I found needful rest in its shade. Each fall the depth of color took my breath away.

In time, I married and left home. After I had children, I took them to the farm, walked them down to the tree, showed them the red stems, and taught them its name. When the leaves fell, I raked them into a pile, and we fell into God’s color.

But time and circumstance marched through my days. In the craziness of life, I had forgotten the splendor of the tree. I worked long and hard and carried many burdens. Momma and Daddy helped watch the children. The days blurred into weeks, into months, into years. I was in full-on survival mode.

One day, mid-autumn, I drove to the house to pick up my children and found them high in the red-leaf maple branches. I parked the car and raced toward the tree. My first instinct was to tell them to come down immediately! They could fall. They could break an arm, or a leg, or worse.  By the time I reached the base of the tree, I was sucking air. Fear, adrenaline and the sprint across the yard hammered my pulse through my veins. When I looked up, God caught my breath. So many branches. So many leaves. So much color. I stood in the shade of His splendor and let memory cool the flames of a blazing-fast life.

At what point had I forgotten to stand and gaze?

My children had discovered the wonder of a simple tree. After a time, they clambered down. No broken limbs of flora or humans. Though their feet were planted on terra firma, I could see through the brightness of their eyes that their hearts were still high among the branches.

The Old Testament prophet, Zechariah, pegged it when he wrote of the ultimate branch: Jesus.

Lord Jesus branches out to the hearts of men and women and children, even thousands of years after His death, burial and resurrection. He has become the head of the church and even now reigns on His throne in Heaven until it is time for Him to come and bring His people home once and for all. 

Why? Why did Jesus become a branch that reaches out to the people of earth when He could have happily remained in Heaven and gone about His holy business there?

Because He loved us, for one thing. Because He obeyed His Father, for another. And the very last part of these verses in Zechariah 6 tells us the last: in all the chaos that we put ourselves through and that others heap upon us, He wants us to have peace.

Peace in the shade of a mighty BRANCH.

Father,

You always know best. You see farther than I do, know infinitely more than I do, and offer all those things I cannot attain on my own. Thank You for sending Your Branch. May I keep the wonder of Him in my heart and may I never stop gazing upon Your splendor.