Are you a Cactus or a Tree?

When I read Jeremiah 17:5-8 in the Bible, it all came back to me.

Once, as an infant, I was lost in the desert in the southwest part of the United States.  My mother took a short walk from our campground while she was holding me, somehow became disoriented, and lost her way.  She wandered aimlessly and we slept beneath a mesquite tree that night.

We went the wrong way far into that parched land.  My dad, a mining engineer got together a team of his friends and searched for us.  I believe this went on for a couple of days.  That was before the era of cell phones and Bing maps.  We were both dehydrated and she started seeing things that were not there.

Eventually, they found us. Everything turned out okay.  I do not remember any of it but heard about after I grew to adulthood.  It surprised me quite a lot.

I lived in desert climes from time to time and remember the dryness, the stunted plants, the brave, strange lizards, birds, and other animals.  The lonesome wail of the coyote, the maddening heat of the day, and the sudden cold at night still haunt my memory.

Good images also remain with me. We often fished and swam in the Rio Grand, the Mimbres River, and Elephant Butte Dam, all lush green places. I loved the willow trees and the cottonwoods that clung to the water’s banks.

Jeremiah tells us that he who trusts in man and whose heart strays away from the Lord is cursed.

“He shall be like the heath in the desert, and shall not see when good comes; but will inhabit the parched places in the wilderness, in a salt land.” 

A heath is a thorny plant, something on the order of a cactus, which grows in parched desert areas and salt lands where little else will thrive. 

We find a much better future for those who trust in God.  The verses in Jeremiah KJV continue:

^“Blessed is the man that trusteth in the Lord whose hope the Lord is.  For he shall be as a tree planted by the waters, and that spreadeth out her roots by the river, and shall not see when heat cometh, but her leaf shall be green; and shall not be careful in the year of drought, neither shall cease from yielding fruit.”

Will you trust God and be like the tree standing by the water? Or, will you trust in man and the things of earth and dry up spiritually, like a mesquite tree, or a cactus?  It is your choice.

1Peter 5,7 says, “Give all your worries and cares to God, for he cares about you.”