Roots Run Deep

Ephesians 3:17
By Harold D. Dinsmore, M.Div.
© 2007 Harold D. Dinsmore

            If you take a seed, let’s say a bean seed. And place it in a baggy with a damp paper towel inside and seal it up and place it in a windowsill, what will begin to happen?  Germination.  Right?  As germination takes place what physical changes happens to the seed?  You will soon see a root system begin to grow and a stem system to form with the two halves of the seed attached.

            What is the most essential element of the now living plant as it begins to grow?  It begins to produce a root system from which it gathers the needed nutrients from the soil but it also prepares to draw the all-important moisture from the ground around it.  It is essential that the root system develops for those obvious reasons, but it must send down and develop a deepening root system to hold it firmly in the soils as it raises itself to the sun and produces the leave system to begin photosynthesis and to ultimately produce fruit.  Without a root system the plant is doomed to die.

            In the book of Ephesians, Paul the Apostle is writing to the church and says this in verse 17-19 of chapter 3.  “That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that you being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints, what is the breadth, and length and depth and height, and to know the love of Christ, which passes knowledge that you might be filled with all the fullness of God.”