Two trees

As I sit down to type this morning I am conscious that it is our wedding anniversary.  Alison and I have been married for 16 years!  I sometimes wonder where that time has gone.  Two trees growing beside each other is a good visual metaphor of our marriage.  Through the years we are becoming more entwined in one another.  We haven't lost our individuality but we live daily in an embrace.

I am also aware of it being Lent.  That time when we look towards Jesus journey to the cross of Good Friday and the empty tomb of Easter morning.  The visual metaphor of the tree is used again and again in scripture and it is a helpful one.  Psalm 1 reminds us that we are to be tree-like with roots that refresh and sustain.  Living lives that are an eternal meditation on the sustaining Law of the Lord.

My journey in faith is supported by my monastic community in Rostrevor.  I strive to live that rhythm of work rest and pray.  My daily heart-beat, the unseen beat of recollection and reflection in God's presence.  To pray always as a sometimes silent meditation on the truth that God is always there and the time of spoken prayer as an acknowledgement of God's proxmity in my life.

Someone once told me that the root system of a tree is matched by the spread of the canopy of the tree.  In my life in recent years I have been trying to live with an acknowledgment that my roots.  those actions unseen and unobserved by others are essential as they feed my life.  My roots need to go down deep as the psalmist reflects so that the leaf will not wither.

This is true both of marriage and also of faith.  The changing of one's life from an individual to a spouse involves the seen and the unseen.  The times of recollection and reflection on one's marriage is to beat in the same manner as one's relationship with God.  There are times when you live out a simple unspoken acknowledgment that you love and are loved by another person.  Then there are those times of intimacy and proximity when what is unspoken finds expression and voice.

My prayer for you and for me is that we may know, experience and express the fruit of  being rooted in God and in the one he has given us to love.

Psalm 1
    ¹How blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked,
         Nor stand in the path of sinners,
         Nor sit in the seat of scoffers!
    ²But his delight is in the law of the LORD,
         And in His law he meditates day and night.
    ³He will be like a tree firmly planted by streams of water,
         Which yields its fruit in its season
         And its leaf does not wither;
         And in whatever he does, he prospers.
    ⁴The wicked are not so,
         But they are like chaff which the wind drives away.
    ⁵Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment,
         Nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous.
    ⁶For the LORD knows the way of the righteous,
         But the way of the wicked will perish.