I’m not advocating for increased social media usage. Is it addictive? Probably. Is it mostly a waste of time? Most of the time. Can you learn useful and edifying things from social media? Absolutely.

The medium itself isn’t good or bad. It all depends on the person using it and the people who are creating the content. One such person fairly blew my mind with this little nugget of truth.

He was speaking about how a tree grows. Honestly, I don’t give much thought to it since I am not an arborist (or whatever you call people who make a living studying trees).

He said that trees grow in two directions: upward and downward.

The tree grows downward into the deep richness of dark soil, developing a system of roots that can sustain the tree. The tree also grows upward toward the sky. That part wasn’t the mind blowing part.

The part I’d never thought about is the tree has to have the roots first before it can bear the fruit. If a tree has no root system, it won’t last. It will topple over at the first gust of wind or hard rain. A bit like those who hear the gospel but never go deeper with it to combine it with faith.

So many of us want instant success. We want immediate gratification. We don’t understand that for successful vertical growth we often need to go deep into the dark and the damp and the dirt to develop a foundation of roots that can sustain upward growth. We need to be grounded in the truth of God through His Word and His work in our lives to make us more like Him.

So much of what God does in us is something that is in secret. Not even we can see all that God does in us. I seem to remember posting about how God can do 10,000 things in us and we are sometimes only aware of 3 or 4 of them at any given time.

So much of what seems like God’s silences or inactivity might just be working underneath to nurture those roots and give us the foundation we need for upward spiritual growth. We are becoming the kind of people God can then use to bless multitudes when we in our own power could bless no one because we have nothing of worth to offer.

Remember God is always at work whether you can see it or feel it or not. God is always keeping His promises to finish what He started in you and in me. Trust the process even when you can’t see it or see the results right away. Know that He will be faithful to do what he says because He is a promise keeper.