I realize that this is a strange title for a blog post. No, it is not a campaign to raise awareness regarding the imminent loss of nut trees. It is not a new organic diet to cure cancer. It is rather a concept that has spiritual significance to me. Try not to laugh…smirking is allowed.
As an introverted teenager, ages ago in boarding school, I was blessed by the words God spoke to Jeremiah: 1:6 ESV 6 Then I said, “Ah, Lord God! Behold, I do not know how to speak, for I am only a youth.” 7 But the Lord said to me,
“Do not say, ‘I am only a youth’;
for to all to whom I send you, you shall go,
and whatever I command you, you shall speak.
8 Do not be afraid of them,
for I am with you to deliver you,
declares the Lord.”
For many years, these words were tremendously helpful; however I am no longer a youth. One day in my later years, I was reading this chapter in the Amplified Bible and found the following verses: “11 Moreover, the word of the Lord came to me, saying, Jeremiah, what do you see? And I said, I see a branch or shoot of an almond tree [the emblem of alertness and activity, blossoming in late winter].
12 Then said the Lord to me, You have seen well, for I am alert and active, watching over My word to perform it.”
Alertness, activity, and the ability to blossom even late in the winter of life, that sounds great to me! It is necessary to observe that God is the one who is alert and active in the performing of His word. This fact is important, since that means the activity is generated in His power and not in mine.
Recently, I encountered reference to the humble almond again in Numbers chapter 17, where even after his tremendous sin in enabling the people to worship the idol of the calf, Aaron’s tribe is chosen to be priests by the selection of his staff.
The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 2 “Speak to the people of Israel, and get from them staffs, one for each fathers’ house, from all their chiefs according to their fathers’ houses, twelve staffs. Write each man’s name on his staff, 3 and write Aaron’s name on the staff of Levi…5 And the staff of the man whom I choose shall sprout…8 On the next day Moses went into the tent of the testimony, and behold, the staff of Aaron for the house of Levi had sprouted and put forth buds and produced blossoms, and it bore ripe almonds.
What a sign of restoration! Sometimes we might wish we had a similar test to give to our Christian leaders who have fallen to see whose repentance was real. Even more important for me is that God knows my heart. He can cause me to blossom and bear fruit again even when others have written me off as a spiritual failure. Grace can do that!
For years, that rod of Aaron was just a dried up piece of stick found dead in the desert. Until it was touched by God. Francis Schaeffer describes what it is like to be a “Rod of God”.
“The people who receive praise from the Lord Jesus will not in every case be the people who held leadership in this life. There will be persons who were sticks of wood that stayed close to God and were quiet before him, and were used in power by him in a place that looks small to men. Each Christian is to be a rod of God in the place of God for him. We must remember throughout our lives that in God’s sight there are not little people and no little places. Only one thing is important: to be consecrated person’s in God’s place for us, at each moment.”[i]
This stick of almond wood intends to stay close to the alert and active God, who is going to fulfill His word in my life. I may blossom in the late winter of my life and, who knows, quite possibly become even nuttier than I am now!
[i]
Schaeffer, Francis A. No Little People. Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 1974.