The Elderberry Bush by the Road

Have you ever posted something and then found yourself, ten minutes later, reaching for your phone to see who noticed? Maybe it was a photograph, a reflection, even a verse of scripture, or a devotional insight.

You told yourself you shared it to encourage someone. And perhaps you did. But there was that small, familiar itch underneath: Did they like it? Did anyone comment?

I know that itch well. I can write a sentence about humility and, before the ink is dry, wonder how many people will praise me for my humility. That's kind of the absurdity of sin. Even our virtues have a tendence to get mixed up with pride, or other vices.

"Vanity of vanities, says the Teacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity" (Ecclesiastes 1:2).

When that was written, they didn't even have screens.

The Hebrew word is hebel, breath or vapor, used figuratively in the language of the time as "vanity." It's the mist that rises off a field at dawn and is gone by the time you finish your coffee.

That is what applause is. That is what the number beneath a post amounts to. So much of what we accumulate in this world is this kind of vanity, and how much more so what we amass on digital platforms.

It's all code, really. That "level" someone achieves on a video game. After working so hard to get there, what's left?

Vapor.

And yet here is the strange grace hidden in our folly: a single breath, drawn in love, is not vapor at all.

It has infinite worth, because it is drawn toward the One who is infinite. One quiet act of love weighs more than a thousand words crafted to impress the world.

The problem is never that we are small. The problem is that we keep turning our recollections back upon ourselves, like a dog casing its own tail.

Paul understood how to break the circle. "But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong" (1 Corinthians 1:27).

Paul doesn't say, "God chose the foolish and then made them impressive."

He says God chose them as foolish, as weak, so that no one could mistake the source of their power and blessing.

This is why Paul could write, :So, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me" (2 Corinthians 12:9).

If my pride keeps spoiling my gratitude, then my pride is simply more evidence of how much I need Him. Let that be my boast.

If God can love someone so prone to wretchedness as me, then truly no one is beyond His reach.

Of course, the moment I say that, the old liar starts flapping those lips again: Look how humble you are to admit it!

False humility just another kind of pride.

But here I have learned not to panic, and certainly not to despair. The way out of that hall of mirrors is not more self-examination. It is to stop looking at myself at all and look at Him.

No one taught me this more gently than St. Thérèse of Lisieux, the Little Flower. In her autobiography she describes looking at a garden and realizing that “if all flowers wanted to be roses, nature would lose her springtime beauty” (Story of a Soul, Manuscript A).

The rose and the lily do not rob the violet of its perfume. Every flower is beautiful simply by being what God made it, planted where He planted it. Thérèse concluded that perfection “consists in doing His will, in being what He wills us to be” (ibid.).

Left to grow of my own accord, I would be choked by thorns and thistles.

If I choose my own soil, the soil that gets noticed and admired, I will never blossom. But if I should turn out to be a thorn or a thistle myself, well then, God has made me such.

If He alone delights in me, that is enough.

What matters is not the kind of plant I am but whose hand planted me and whether I am rooted in good soil.

There is an elderberry bush that grows near the gravel road not far from where I live. It bears its little clusters of dark fruit every summer, and we harvest what we can.

But this year the county mowed the ditch before we got to it, cutting the bush down to a stub.

This has happened before. To the bush, it seems not to be too distressed.

The next year it comes back, that it might again be ignored, cast with gravel dust, and to go on bearing the same berries. Even if we don't get to pick them, the birds do.

Perhaps that is what I am. An ignored, dust-covered, cut-down elderberry bush.

The fruit is there whether or not anyone sees it. It is not my job to make my fruit known, only to bear what I'm given to bear. Whether anyone recognizes it is no matter.

And if it feeds only the birds, what a delight that is! Jesus said of them, "Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them" (Matthew 6:26).

The elderberry bush does not concern itself whether its fruit goes to the birds, to us, or even gets churned up by the county mower. It keeps coming back. It keeps producing the same fruit, just the same.

This is what I wrote about recently (was it yesterday?) when we discussed Jesus words: "Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect" (Matthew 5:48). The Greek word is teleios. It does not mean flawless or impressive. It means complete, mature, having arrived at the telos, the end for which a thing was made.

A perfect elderberry bush is not one that becomes a rose. It is one that bears elderberries. Try to be a rose, and that bush will fail at being both a rose and an elderberry bush.

A perfect you is one who has become, in love, exactly whom God created you to be.

So how do we live this?

First, when you feel the itch to check who noticed, take one breath and offer it in love instead. Make that breath your prayer. It will do more for your soul than any number of "likes" or comments.

Second, do one good thing today that no one will ever know about. Let it be fruit for the birds.

Third, when pride spoils your gratitude, do not spend an hour dissecting it. Simply turn your gaze back to God. Laugh, if you must, at your own wretched silliness, and give thanks that God is generous to you no less. Self-forgetfulness is the quickest road to humility.

Finally, accept your soil. Stop asking to be transplanted somewhere more visible. Ask only to be rooted where He has placed you.

St. Thérèse showed me where the sweetness comes from, a sweetness that does not sour even in suffering but grows more delectable there. For it is there, cut down and covered in dust, that we find the One who is Love alone.

 

God Bless,

Judah