Feb | 12 | The One Necessary Root

Dream Word – DISCOVER

Matthew 13:20-21 But he who received the seed on stony places, this is he who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy; yet he has no root in himself, but endures only for a while. For when tribulation or persecution arises because of the word, immediately he stumbles. NKJV

The One Necessary Root

“Whoever is uprooted himself, uproots others. Whoever is rooted in himself does not doesn’t uproot others.” So says the ‘mad mystic’ Simone Weil and of course, I do believe she is quite correct.

I do not wish to disparage Simone, this woman of phenomenal intelligence and courageous conviction, but her mysticism was quite, shall we say, ‘rooted in a broad spiritual context,’ rather than Christianity per se. Weil died aged just 34 years, during WWII. She was working 'beyond enthusiasm' for the ‘Free French,’ allowing herself only to eat what the German imposed food ration in occupied France allowed. Diagnosed already with T.B. she probable ate even less. Upon her death, it was ruled that she had committed suicide by starving herself while the balance of her mind was disturbed. In all probability Simone was severely Anorexic.

Weil’s last piece of work before her death was called ‘The Need for Roots’. In this work, Simone, while addressing the past of her defeated and dispossessed country of France, both proposes and plans an intricate way ahead for the future of her country after WWII. That is the context from which I have plucked here, her most interesting observation on roots, “Whoever is uprooted himself, uproots others. Whoever is rooted in himself does not doesn’t uproot others.” I think it somewhat lines up with some of Karl Barth’s observations on the love of God, wherein he argues that because ‘God is rooted in Himself,’ and therefore, ‘His love is an overflow of his essence that he turns to us’ (Church Dogmatics, p273).

Extending these two propositions of Weil and Barth, I wonder if it is correct that people who are rooted in completeness, overflow in giving life, and people who have no root, do not just whither and die themselves, but like a drowning man clutching at his rescuer, will from those same panicked, angry, power-seeking, self soul- satisfying, iron-gripped fingers, try and pluck out of the ground those very folks exuding the completeness and wholeness, that they so desperately desire to possess for themselves. I think there is some merit in my thinking, because Jesus alludes to this very fact as not only a natural calamity of growing wheat in this fallen world but as an act of total war from the great enemy of our souls himself, against the church of Christ! What can be said about these things?

Firstly, that we need to make sure we have a root within ourselves which is fixed in the completeness of God. The root is within us, but the fruit is outside of us, it overflows from us, it hangs down full of righteous seduction, dripping with succulent juices and ready to be plucked from bent branched trees. Always, always dear friend, look at your root and look at your fruit.

Secondly, that the felt choking from the world and even from professors in the church, of which there are many, are more indicative of their state than of yours. The strangling tare and the care of the things of this world, will always produce a choking on the fruit bearing trees of God. Be wise in these things, for you will know in your spirit, what the personal barrenness of incompleteness feels like and what the coughing, choking, of life-sucking, power-hungry, black hole, critical and condemning bad-breathed tares feels like as well! Know the difference. Fix both of them.

Listen: - "The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field; but while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat and went his way. But when the grain had sprouted and produced a crop, then the tares also appeared. So the servants of the owner came and said to him, 'Sir, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have tares?' He said to them, 'An enemy has done this.' The servants said to him, 'Do you want us then to go and gather them up?' But he said, 'No, lest while you gather up the tares you also uproot the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest, and at the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, "First gather together the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them, but gather the wheat into my barn."'" Matthew 13:24-30 NKJV

Pray:- Lord, deliver me from the constant cares of this world and the tares of the enemy. Put soft soil beneath my weakling roots and soft spring showers and soft sunshine, above my sapling shoots, in Jesus name I pray, amen.