Wild
Excerpt from Romans 11:13-29
"You, a wild olive shoot, were grafted in their place to share the rich root of the olive tree."
Reflection by Quinn G. Caldwell
Paul uses a farming metaphor to put you in your place.
Originally, he was writing to show how Gentiles (the wild olive shoot) had been brought into life with the Jewish God (the roots). Today, he's talking about you. In some sense, all of us are wild shoots grafted onto something older, deeper, and stronger than we are. We get our support, our sustenance, our life from that gnarled old rootstock.
We uproot it at our own peril.
Have you sometimes been a little too wild, a little too ready to uproot a little too much of our faith? Have you laughed at old hymns that gave our grandmothers strength? Have you "critiqued" and "problematized" old doctrines left and right without asking why they gave slaves and oppressed peoples daily strength? Have you officiously declared that a belief that once saved someone's life should be tossed out? Have you scoffed at ancient things that you did not understand? I have. And I have come to believe that it’s a dangerous and an ungrateful thing for a new graft like me to say too lightly to too many ancient roots, "I have no need of you".
Prayer
God, thank you for new insights, fresh ideas, and holy reformations. But thank you first for old doctrines, old creeds, old hymns, old visions, ancient hard-won truths, and the ancestors that gave them to me. Most of all, thank you for giving a wild thing like me the chance to bear fruit for such a lovely old tree. Amen.
Excerpt from Romans 11:13-29
"You, a wild olive shoot, were grafted in their place to share the rich root of the olive tree."
Reflection by Quinn G. Caldwell
Paul uses a farming metaphor to put you in your place.
Originally, he was writing to show how Gentiles (the wild olive shoot) had been brought into life with the Jewish God (the roots). Today, he's talking about you. In some sense, all of us are wild shoots grafted onto something older, deeper, and stronger than we are. We get our support, our sustenance, our life from that gnarled old rootstock.
We uproot it at our own peril.
Have you sometimes been a little too wild, a little too ready to uproot a little too much of our faith? Have you laughed at old hymns that gave our grandmothers strength? Have you "critiqued" and "problematized" old doctrines left and right without asking why they gave slaves and oppressed peoples daily strength? Have you officiously declared that a belief that once saved someone's life should be tossed out? Have you scoffed at ancient things that you did not understand? I have. And I have come to believe that it’s a dangerous and an ungrateful thing for a new graft like me to say too lightly to too many ancient roots, "I have no need of you".
Prayer
God, thank you for new insights, fresh ideas, and holy reformations. But thank you first for old doctrines, old creeds, old hymns, old visions, ancient hard-won truths, and the ancestors that gave them to me. Most of all, thank you for giving a wild thing like me the chance to bear fruit for such a lovely old tree. Amen.
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