(March
21, 2010) A Weekly meditation of Pastor Chang
(* “The Futurology, Soothsaying,
Fortunetelling, and Biblical Prophecy” (14) will be postponed to next Sunday)
The snow storms twice in February and the
heavy raining in March (3/12-15) that cause the ground in New York area
softened. Although it did not have strong wind, yet it already caused a lot of
trouble in the city. Everywhere we can find: lose electricity, terrible traffics,
the pavement of local roads and highways are broken, many holes were created,
many trees were fallen down. Let us see: how powerful the nature force is. If
we as humans cannot fight against the nature; how can we fight against the
Creator of the nature? Human beings sometimes are arrogant enough to deny the
greatness of God. Why? It was because of Satan which rebels against God that we
humans are affected by such kind of evil. May the Lord have mercy upon us!
Last week, several occasions, I drove car to
pick and send people to attend Bible Fellowship in Staten Island and Queens.
Almost everywhere I can see fallen trees. Some of them hit on cars and houses.
I heard that there was one case that a tree when it fell down and killed one
person. In fact, before our parsonage, one big tree fell down too and hit
another one and both were dead. Fortunately, no one got hurt.
If one has an opportunity to take a look of
the fallen trees, one may find that there are two reasons for them to be fallen
down:
First of all, their roots were too shallow:
Take the example of the fallen tree in front of the parsonage. I remember 15
years ago, when it grew, it was tiny. I could pull it out without much
strength. Yet, I was sympathetic. I didn’t pull it out and let it grew. Soon,
it grew well to become a very big tree, taller than the roof. But why did such
a big tree fall down even was not stricken by a strong wind? Obviously, it was
because of shallow roots. Why? It is because the surface soil is full of
nutrition and water; the roots did not have to grow too deep in order to get
life supply. The roots got spoil and lazy. And since it was not strongly rooted
on the deep ground when the ground after the days of snow and water, it turned
to be soft. Any big tree like that cannot resist any wind to blow will fall.
Because of this reason, I would like to ask
our parents: Do you raise your children and deepen their roots—which are their
faith and value system on the right ground? Are you preparing them in the
future to be tough enough when they grow up and have to face the challenges
–human storms and difficulties? You, as parents: Do you spoil your children
that they are always too much overprotected, so that they take for granted of
everything. They even do not know how to peel off the skin of an orange in the
age of 10! Let us take a look of the fallen trees. Do you know how to nourish
them with good Christian faith and God’s love so that they will know how to be
growing well in Christ? A Chinese saying which says well, “The rush wind
will test the toughness of grasses, and the snow and rain will test the roots
of trees.”
Furthermore, most of the fallen trees were
individually isolated. Even some of them were arrayed in one line but still
individually planted without protection by a group of trees. If one sees the
forest when a group of trees stay together, most of them would not fall,
because they share the strikes of strong wind. Not only that their roots were
intertwined together under the ground. In other words, they are connected
together that make them tough and strong from falling down. Today we have many
single parents they feel tough to raise children. It is really not easy. And
any single child at home is the same, more fragile than those who have many
siblings. Therefore, my suggestion is: Please bring your children to church;
this is a Godly big family. When you children come to church they will learn
how to interact with one another. They will grow well and better.
Listen: the nature has provided us so many great
lessons for us to learn from. Please let us reconsider and meditate the great
love of Christ. Hopefully your next generation will grow better than your
generation. I believe that it is the dream of most of the parents.