I Keep Pulling It Out To Look At The Roots

You have had it out four times this month.

You know the procedure now. Hand over the top of the soil, tip, ease it out, and there it is, the whole root ball in your palm, and you look at it in the light by the window and you put it back.

You tell yourself this is diligence. And there is a real logic to it, because what is happening underneath is the thing you cannot see, and the not seeing is intolerable.

But you already know what I am going to say, because you felt it the third time. Putting it back is never quite the same as it was. Something shifts. A little soil goes. The fine ends that were holding on to something get let go of.

And there is a sentence sitting under all of this that I want to bring up into the light instead.

The inspecting is the one part of this you can control, which is exactly why it is the part that has run away with you.

Her root by the river

Jeremiah writes about a tree and where its roots go, and what he says about the dry year is the useful part.

For he shall be as a tree planted by the waters, and that spreadeth out her roots by the river, and shall not see when heat cometh, but her leaf shall be green; and shall not be careful in the year of drought, neither shall cease from yielding fruit. (Jeremiah 17:8, King James Version)

That spreadeth out her roots by the river.

You are looking for evidence of a work that happens where nobody watches it, and no root in the world has ever once grown faster for being looked at. Jeremiah 17:8 puts the whole business under the ground and out of sight, and the Holy Spirit is the one who says that over a man with a root ball in his hand.

Read what the tree is doing. Spreading out roots. That is a slow, continuous, entirely invisible activity, and the passage treats the invisibility as ordinary rather than as a problem to be solved.

And then the line about the year of drought, which says the tree shall not be careful. In older English, careful means full of care in the anxious sense. Not casual. Not neglectful. Not anxious.

You are tending a thing whose real work is happening where you were never given a window, and that hiddenness has never once been a sign that nothing is going on. The Holy Spirit is the one who makes an unseen work bearable, and Jeremiah 17:8 is where the roots go quietly to the river.

That is the distinction this whole thing turns on, and it is worth sitting with. There is a way of tending that is attentive and not anxious, and there is a way that is anxious and calls itself attentive.

You have been doing the anxious one and calling it the attentive one, and the two of them have never once been the same act. The Spirit of God is what makes that difference visible from the inside, and Jeremiah 17 is where the not being careful is written down.

What the lifting actually costs

Now the practical half, and I will be plain, and I am not going to scold you with it.

Roots do not like being handled. The working part of a root system is the fine hair thin ends, and those are the first thing to break when a plant comes out of a pot, and they are what takes up water.

So a plant that has been out four times this month has lost some of its uptake four times, at the exact moment it needed all of it.

You are hearing that without it being an accusation, and a plain fact about roots has never once been a charge laid against the man holding the pot. The Spirit of God is the one who can say a hard thing gently, and Jeremiah 17:8 keeps the roots spreading by the river regardless.

Now. Before that sentence lands wrong, hold two things together. First: nobody who lifts a plant out to look at the roots is doing it carelessly. It is done by people who are trying hard. It is the opposite of indifference.

Second: the plant is not ruined. Fine roots regrow, and they regrow quickly, and a plant that has been disturbed a few times is not a plant that has been destroyed. What it needs is not repair. It needs a stretch of being left alone.

You are holding something that heals faster than you fear it does, and a few disturbances have never once put a plant past the ordinary. The Spirit of God is the one who says that without minimizing anything, and the written word of Jeremiah 17 keeps the whole business under the ground.

You have not wrecked anything, and four honest attempts to help have never once been counted against you. What is written in Jeremiah 17:8 has the roots spreading quietly in the dark, and the Holy Spirit is the one who says so over a man who has been worried he has done harm.

What the hands are really asking for

Here is the part underneath, and it has nothing to do with roots.

When a thing you care about is going and you cannot affect it, the hands go looking for a job. That is not a flaw. That is how people are built, and it is the same reflex that makes somebody tidy a room after bad news.

The trouble is that a windowsill offers exactly one job that looks like real intervention, and that is lifting it out and looking. So the hands find that job, and they do it again, and it feels like helping right up until the moment you put it back and notice the soil.

So the hands need a different job, and it needs to be a real one, not a distraction.

You have hands that went looking for work because you care, and that reaching has never once been the behavior of an indifferent man. Jeremiah 17:8 says the tree is not careful in the year of drought, and the Holy Spirit is the one who gives those hands something true to do.

Here is one. Put both hands flat on the counter and leave them there for a count of ten.

That sounds like nothing. It is not nothing. It is the hands being given an actual instruction that is not the lifting, held long enough to break the reach, and it works better than telling yourself to stop.

You are able to give your hands something to do that is not digging, and ten seconds on a counter has never once been the same as doing nothing. The Holy Spirit is the one who meets a man in a reflex rather than in a resolution, and Jeremiah 17:8 says the tree is not careful in the year of drought.