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Thursday, January 3, 2013

Coconut Tree Climber

When I read the following, I immediately recognized the truth in it:

“Try to state to yourself what you believe to be the absolute truth of God, and you will be allowing God the opportunity to pass it on through you to someone else…The author or speaker from whom you learn the most is not the one who teaches you something you didn’t know before, but the one who helps you take a truth with which you have quietly struggled, give it expression, and speak it clearly and boldly.” (My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers)

Authors like Oswald Chambers, C.S. Lewis, Dallas Willard, Philip Yancey, Philip Gulley, and Henry David Thoreau are just a few of the great thinkers who have re-expressed the truth in a digestible form so that people like me have access to it. I, in turn, struggle to restate these truths, until they make sense to me.

I can identify with those coconut tree climbers who scoot up the trunk and cut down the coconuts. Even after the coconuts are in front of them, many people don’t know how to access the edible portions of this exotic nut. They usually wait for these experts to skillfully cut off the husk with their machetes, crack the shell, and reveal the nourishing parts of the coconut.

I mostly write to clarify my own thoughts. Most of my time is spent wrestling, struggling, processing, analyzing, and hacking away at truths until I understand them. Then I write. I pray that God uses me like a machete to cut through the tough husk and reveal His truth.   



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