Two deaths have greeted Wayland CRC this week, deaths
of two women who were dearly loved by all of us. Judy Potter and Josie Talsma have been
pillars in our church, strong in their faith, bright in their happiness and
joy, tender in their love. We mourn
their deaths, the sudden holes they leave in life behind them, a vacuum that
nothing can quite ever fill again. And
yet, more than our mourning, we rejoice in the life Judy and Josie shared with
us. We celebrate the time we were
blessed with to get to know and love two such beautiful people. We are thankful because we were the lucky ones to know Judy and Josie. We were their family.
And this week, I am blessed not only to celebrate the past
lives of Judy and Josie, I am also blessed to soon welcome a new baby into our
fold. Missionary friends of ours, Josiah
and Sarah Bokma, are having their second child very soon and are excited to see
just who this little person is going to be.
Two different celebrations, both of life: one of ending and
one of beginning.
My sister told me the other day that Jerry Zandstra shared
with our church a beautiful metaphor describing the life of the Church. This
metaphor struck me as so beautiful and I just have to share it with you. Jerry described the Church, both local and
global, as being like the aspen tree.
For those of you who are not botanists or biologists, aspen trees are
very unique in the way they live and grow.
From wise ol’ Wikipedia (cough cough sarcasm):
“All of the aspens typically grow in large clonal colonies,
derived from a single seedling, and spread by means of root suckers;
new stems in the colony may appear at up to 30–40 m (98–131 ft) from
the parent tree. Each individual tree can live for 40–150 years above ground,
but the root system of the
colony is long-lived. In some cases, this is for thousands of years, sending up
new trunks as the older trunks die off above ground.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspen)
And so a cove of aspen trees is a clone family
connected to the parent tree—and to each other—by its extensive and
life-sustaining root system that can last for seemingly forever. How cool is that?! And so, in honor of the Church being like the
Apsen trees, I’ve written a short poem:
We are the
Aspen,
Trees with
roots that go deep,
deep,
deep,
deep.
Roots that
grasp one another,
Entwined,
joined, inseparable
Connecting
tree...........................to tree................................to tree
We are One.
One in body,
One in mind,
One in
spirit.
When one tree
cries, we all weep
When one tree
laughs, we all join in glee
When one tree
dies, we all mourn
When one tree
grows, we all share in the new life
Storms may
come,
Toppling
trees from their roots,
But in their sudden
absence we live on,
Our roots
keeping us strong with life.
May we never
forget that we are forever united,
That we
reflect the image of the Father who made us,
That we are
much greater than what we seem at first glance,
That our life
is in the community beneath the earthen ground.
We are the
Aspen.
We are One.
I dedicate this humble piece of
literature to the beautiful and inspiring lives of Judy Potter and Josie Talsma
and to the little baby of Sarah and Josiah, whoever you might be :)
Stay tuned!
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