I was a child of the wild. Not that I did crazy things, although my penchant for climbing trees up to their tippy tops might be crazy. Rather, I spent most of my childhood days when I wasn’t in school in the wild. My playground was the forest, the streams and the meadows that surrounded my house and my neighbors. I dammed up brooks and created stepping stone walkways across them. I pretended I was Pocahontas and would try to walk through the woods without making a sound.
The deer loved our fields and apple orchard. They also loved my father’s vegetable garden. After munching on the apples and vegetables, they would find the softest field grass on which to bed down at night. I’d find their nests while hunting for the wild strawberries that littered our meadows. Then I’d pretend I was a deer and curl up for a sunshine nap. A high privet hedge bordered our fields and our neighbor’s property. Underneath the hedge, jewelweed grew rampant with a lush carpet of wild violets. On hot days, that’s where you would find me. I’d lie on the violets and look up at the tiny orange jewelweed blossoms hanging down on their slender threads. Fortunately, the violets had already bloomed. Later on in the summer, I’d nap amidst a bed of yellow daylilies that overlooked the road to our house.
By now, you may wonder where is she going with this? I’ve been thinking about the passage where Paul refers to the Gentiles as wild olive branches grafted into the cultivated olive trees. He was expressing sorrow that the Jewish people who didn’t accept the Messiah were branches cut off from the cultivated olive tree and the promises of the Messiah. His ministry was to have the wild olives grafted into the promises and fulfillment of the Messiah. Paul then tells us how delighted the Lord will be when He can re-graft the Jewish people into the tree as they believe in the Messiah.
“For if you were cut from what is by nature a wild olive tree, and grafted, contrary to nature, into a cultivated olive tree, how much more will these, the natural branches, be grafted back into their own olive tree.” (1)
We were once wild. When we believe, the Master grafts us in. That means taking a slice out of our stem and a slice into the tree and wrapping tape around the two, so they grow together as one tree. I’ve seen this done, and it always amazed me that the trunk and the branch meld together.
But then Paul warns us not to become prideful about our status.
“If some of the branches have been broken off, and you, though a wild olive shoot, have been grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing sap from the olive root, do not consider yourself to be superior to those other branches. If you do, consider this: You do not support the root, but the root supports you. You will say then, ‘Branches were broken off so that I could be grafted in’” (2)
There are cultivated and wild olive trees. The fruit of the cultivated tree makes the olive and oil we love. The wild olive is not as tasty. When grafted, we grow within the healthy cultivated olive. We become part of the Old Testament promises and their fulfillment in Jesus. (See below for an article with a great photo of a grafted olive branch.)
There are still olive trees growing in the garden of Gethsemane.
There is an entire world out there made up of wild trees, flowers, and understory. I love going to botanical gardens and house and garden tours, seeing how people have arranged the landscapes around their homes to delight the eye and offer sounds and scents. But I am more at home in the wild. Where things grow randomly and rampantly, where every turn in a path brings a new delight. My garden is organized, but it has a wild component that I enjoy.
So as you take your walks, think about how the Master wants to graft you into Him. He wants to live in you and you in Him. The grafting may take a while before you realize the full nature of the gift you have received. Be comforted. He wants you to live with Him always.
“For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.”
Romans 11:36 ESV
- Romans 11:24 ESV
- Romans 11:17-19 NIV
- Hebrew Roots Mom, Wild Olive Branches: The Blessing of Being Grafted In, July 2019.
