The stump isn't dead
The tree might have been dead, but the stump wasn’t. The foundation was the same as it always had been.
Out of the stump of David’s family will grow a shoot—yes, a new Branch bearing fruit from the old root. (Isaiah 11:1)
What do you think when you see a stump?
We have several around our property at Safe Haven Farm. Usually they are an indication of a tree that has died and needed to be removed. But in our area, trees are important. We don’t have that many, so every tree that comes down needs to be carefully considered.
With the wind we have in Kansas, dead trees are dangerous. They can topple over onto houses and barns or other outbuildings and cause lots of expensive damage, so it’s important to remove a dead tree quickly. And if you don’t want the tree to grow back, you need to remove the stump.
The stump is the leftovers. It’s what remains after the rest of the tree comes down, and if you don’t want the tree to grow back, you either need to dig up the stump or burn it out.
I love how God handles the imagery of the stump of David’s family. If God had wanted to go back on His Word, He could have. Humanity had more than proved that they couldn’t be trusted and that they would always turn against Him. Even His own chosen people weren’t worthy of Him.
But that’s not how God responded to His people. That’s not how God treated His promise. His instruction was to leave the stump. In fact, the very idea that David’s family still had a stump meant that even though the tree had been cut down, God was waiting for new life to grow from it.
That’s how God works. He restores new life from brokenness. He redeems our broken futures, fractured because of our own willfulness.
See, sometimes old trees that have died get gnarled and twisted, and they aren’t able to produce good fruit anymore because their branches and limbs are so withered and corrupted. But when you cut down a tree like that and allow it to grow up again, the new tree will produce fruit again. But it will be good fruit.
New, fresh fruit from the old root of a tree that was once dead and now lives again. Isn’t that just like God? The tree might have been dead, but the stump wasn’t. The foundation was the same as it always had been. It was the dead, rotten pieces that needed to be removed so that the good stuff could shine through again.
So if you feel like your life has been chopped down or like brokenness and darkness has twisted everything you’re trying to do, don’t fight against God’s holy axe when he comes to chop down your tree. Don’t stop Him. He knows what He’s doing, and sometimes He needs to clear out the dead stuff so that something new can grow.
Just remember that the stump isn’t dead, and God can bring new life out of even the most hopeless of situations.
Word of the Day
STUMP (גֶּ֫זַע | geza, meaning stem, stalk, root)
Today we’re looking at the word geza, which means stump. However, let’s make sure to distinguish it from the word iqqar (עִקַּר | iqqar), which also means stump used in Daniel 4:26. That word for stump is actually a symbolic representation of a fallen kingdom that God was promising to restore. That particular word is used three times in that one chapter, Daniel 4. But the word we are looking at here is geza, which is specifically referring to a stump that is leftover to encourage new growth. This word too is only used two other places, Job 14:8 and Isaiah 40:24. In all these cases, though, we can see that God is the one who brings growth, whether it is literal or metaphorical.
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