Pastor's Note

NEW FROM OLD
November 5th, 2006

I was driving past a dentist office as they cut down an old tree in the front yard. The tree was badly damaged from storms and needed to come down for the safety of all. Strangely, though, they cut the stump rather high, like about twelve feet above ground level.
A couple weeks later, driving by the same dentist office, I saw a man with a chainsaw working on the tree stump. He was on a ladder and was clearly not in the process of removing the stump. I resolved to come down the same street a little later.
When I returned, I saw what was happening. The man with the chainsaw was what I call a ‘tree stump sculptor.’ He was fashioning a work of art from the remains of the tree. Soon it became apparent that he had cut a large five-foot tooth out of the stump. Leaving the bottom of the tree as it was, the tooth now stood on its own platform.
Every so often you see stumps fashioned into works of art. (I use the word ‘art’ rather loosely.) Some people have the head of a horse or a bust of Elvis in their front yard where a tree had formerly stood.
If I lost a tree, I admit that I would probably not want to turn it into a sculpture. But I do admire people for wanting to bring something new out of the old.
Bringing new from old is what we are all about. Christ constantly calls us to newness. In the same way, we have to see how the old self simply doesn’t measure up to Jesus’ call. Something new has to be fashioned. Often that means cutting away some of the old.
Maybe we have to let God work on us a bit more.