Nearing Home by Billy Graham (best book club books for discussion txt) 📗

scolded when they lead to someplace unsafe. King Solomon in his wisdom predicted this quick dissatisfaction with the latest and greatest when he wrote,

The eye is not satisfied with seeing,

Nor the ear filled with hearing. . . .

There is nothing new under the sun.

Is there anything of which it may be said,

“See, this is new”?

It has already been in ancient times before us. (Ecclesiastes 1:8–10 NKJV)

While we all benefit in some ways from modern technology, I do wonder what state our world would be in if we suddenly lost the electrical power necessary to keep our communications functioning. Would the younger generations know how to grow crops to feed a family? Would they know how to drop anchor and wait for the catch? Would they know how to survive by the sweat of the brow? New is good. Old is necessary.

The Bible has a lot to say about the old and the new. “I write no new commandment to you, but an old commandment which you have had from the beginning. The old commandment is the word which you heard from the beginning” (1 John 2:7 NKJV). In this text John is reminding his readers that the proof of knowing God is following the commandments that He gave long ago, that He gave “from the beginning.” The love of God is then perfected in the one who obeys (1 John 2:5 NKJV). Anything “from the beginning” is old, including God’s love, present before the beginning of time. When man did not fathom the inexpressible love of God the Creator, He sent love down to earth in the form of His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Our redemption is rooted in Jesus’ sacrifice of Himself, keeping us firmly planted.

GROWING FROM SEED TO SEEDLING

Growing anything takes time. It takes planning. It takes commitment. There is something gratifying in tilling soil, planting seed, watering roots, and watching the sun raise a plant from the soil. It is satisfying to break ground, erect an infrastructure, and nail down a roof. A stopwatch cannot count down the months it takes to see the results. Patience has become a lost virtue. One hundred years ago the hourglass marked time. Today, if the iconic hourglass remains on the computer screen longer than a few seconds, it causes undue stress for the student or executive who has no time for contemplation.

I have always admired those who work with their hands. When a friend of mine retired years ago, he and his wife began researching where they might retire. A prerequisite was finding a place where he could have a woodworking shop. Still today he makes beautiful bowls and candlesticks from old wood he finds while hiking in nearby forests.

“What is your favorite wood to work with?” I asked him one day.

“I suppose it would be from the trees that grow along the ridgetops of the Appalachian Mountains,” he answered.

“Why?”

“Because of the harsh climate, those trees grow very slowly,” he replied. “As a result the wood is tough and close-grained, which makes it hard to carve; but anything made from it will be durable and very beautiful.”

That surprised me because I had often hiked past similar trees that were stunted and twisted into grotesque shapes by the fierce, cold winds that frequently buffet the peaks of Mount Mitchell, the highest point in the United States east of the Mississippi River, a dozen or so miles from my home. But when he showed me a box he had carved from this type of wood, I understood that what was once ugly and battered could be made into something exquisite by a masterful hand. I asked him to show me a piece of the rough wood.

“I haven’t any right now. You see, I won’t cut such trees down. I wait until they fall, and then I retrieve them and turn the wood into something beautiful.”

Like those trees along our windswept mountain ridges, we often find ourselves buffeted by storms—the storms of life. Like those trees, we need deep roots that will supply us with the spiritual nutrients needed to grow strong in our faith and to keep us anchored when we are tossed about by life’s trials.

Our country and our world have experienced one catastrophic storm after another the past few years. I revised and updated my book Storm Warning2 in 2010 to heighten awareness of what the Bible has to say about storms in our world, storms in our lives, and the storms to come. As we get older, we encounter storms that we never thought we’d face. But with God’s help and by His grace, we can be strong when the winds begin to blow.

It is no accident that the Bible compares us to trees, urging us to be sure our spiritual roots are deep and strong. The psalmist wrote that the godly person “is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season” (Psalm 1:3). But a tree wasn’t always a tree. It began as a small seed, which in time sprouted and became a seedling. If conditions were right, that fragile seedling grew into a sapling and finally into a mature tree.

The same is true of spiritual life. It begins with a seed—the seed of God’s Word planted in the soil of our souls that eventually sprouts and becomes a new seedling. But—like a tree—that spiritual seedling isn’t meant to remain a seedling forever! It is meant to grow and become strong and mature, bearing fruit that is pleasing to God. The Bible illustrates this truth in another way. When we come to Christ, the Bible says, we are like newborn babies— bursting with new life, but helpless and weak and vulnerable to every kind of danger. But a baby isn’t meant to remain that way forever. Infants are meant to grow and eventually become adults— no longer helpless and weak and vulnerable, but able to take care of themselves and have full and productive lives.

The same