THURSDAY June 20th
Ephesians 3:17
‘. . . so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love. . .’
The latter part of this verse, ‘that you, being rooted and grounded in love’. Is it possible that Paul was using a play on words here, using two words that help us to see how established we need to be regarding our Christian faith. The first word ‘rooted’ points us to being well rooted like a plant or a tree and grounded being firmly placed on a solid foundation like a building.
Rooted in love, grounded in love. I have had difficulty this year in finding a decent compost for the garden, most of it just seems to be too bitty, and difficult to get anything to grow let alone to become well rooted in it. That was until someone I know recommended to me a different compost and told me where I could get it from, (in fact they got me the first three bags) and it made the difference to my planting and growing. We can try to root our lives in so many things, but they will never ever cause us to grow as we should grow as believers, we need to ensure that we are rooted in love, but not any kind of love, rooted in the love of God.
Now, I have also laid some patio this year, it is still a work in progress, to make it easier, I have relied heavily on a sand and gravel foundation, but to ensure that it is firmly established, I am going to have to use some cement to ensure that it is grounded well. Remember what Jesus said about the wise man and the foolish man during his sermon on the mount, and if we want to be wise as Christians, we need to make sure that our lives are grounded firmly on the solid rock of God’s love, for his love will never fail nor crumble.
Being rooted well in the love of God will ensure that we become like well-established trees as we see in Psalm 1, it will promote our personal growth to become those whose leaf will not wither and will produce fruit in season. Rooted well in the love of God we will become firmly established; it will give us stability when the storms of life blow against us.
But as Paul continues, he says in verses 18-19 that as we are well rooted and firmly grounded, we will have strength that will help us to comprehend more fully the wonder of the love of Christ and to be filled with the fulness of God.