Cleanse your hands…and purify your hearts… —James 4:8
Today I am filled by a desire for something I don’t need. A frivolous, material thing. I have thought about it for days. As the desire grows, I go to the window where the days are turning amber. Beyond I see the oak tree as if burning like a yellow fire. Its thick leaves swirl in the wind like wood smoke.
Outside I stroll under the limbs and gaze upward at the full branches. So many things crowd the branches of my life, too. Desires, possessions, jealousies, resentments, worries. Things that clutter my mind, blocking away God’s Presence.
Suddenly wind shakes the oak and a leaf drifts down in a ragged dance. I pick it up, for somehow it has become a symbol of what God seems to be asking of me—“Let go of the thing that crowds My Presence from your life.” Oh Lord, I pray silently. I abandon this desire to You. I am shedding it like a leaf. Fill the space it has taken up in my life.
As I walk inside, I bring the fallen leaf with me and drop it in a basket on the table, a reminder that my desire has been shed.
Today as the leaves fall, I want to begin an exercise in trust and letting go. Each day I will abandon “one leaf” to God…something particular that crowds Him from my life. I want to fill the basket on the table.
Lord, make me an “empty tree” where Your Spirit can blow full and free this month.
