Being the gift

When Ann Voskamp and her farmer husband started having babies, they decided that on their second birthdays each of their six children would be given apple trees of their own.

The genesis of us all is an orchard made of love.

But, what if your family tree is good for nothing but firewood?

And, what of the One who hung on a tree? How did he define neighbor?

And in North America, we are the kin, the limbs of the family tree of Real Believers, Real Live-ers, who are the Real Givers, who everyday decide to Be The G.I.F.T., who buy a coffee for the guy behind us and tuck a gift in the mailbox for the mailman, who carry the groceries out for the frazzled mama with the new baby and a tantruming toddler and who drop off doughnuts for the nurses working the late shift at ER.,/p>

We are the ones who look at the calendar, who see time passing by, who want our lives to add up to more meaning than some tacky glitz in our closet or some egotistical gleam in our garage, who want our lives to add up to an eternity of loving God. We are the young and the old and in between who are the Esther Generation who have been called for such a time as this – to risk our lives, to go out on a limb right now, for our family outside the gate.

If you really are part of the family tree of God – you have to go out on a limb. You have to be the Giving Tree.

A life that’s rooted in Christ and finds its beginning and life and end in being a limb, out on a limb, because if we are going to be real branches of the true vine, we can be nothing less than like Christ in giving and He stretched Himself so far out as to nail Himself to a Tree.