How lovely are thy branches

I love Christmas. I just love everything about it. It always seems that everyone’s in a better mood than they were before Thanksgiving, and then it never fails that everyone can at least muster up a smile and a big hug on Christmas Day. I just love Christmas. Have I already said that?

I was putting up my Christmas tree this year. It’s an artificial one because the real ones are too high maintenance and they never look just right, so I got with the artificial. I always thought that I liked the artificial trees better solely because of the maintenance thing, but then I realized that I like this tree so much because I got to make it look just the way I wanted it to. I live by myself, so there’s no one to argue with about how the tree should look. If I wanted to decorate it with socks tied together, I could. The point is: what I wanted the tree to be, it was.

Sometimes I think I pressure myself or my friends to be molded one way or another. You know, we need to look good when we go to this place because what would people think about us if we just went in there just looking okay? I don’t really get it. Why do we feel so much pressure to please everyone around us? I don’t understand it, but I feel that same pressure that you do all the time. I know my friends do, too. Before we go somewhere we’re all on the phone talking to each other and seeing what the other person is wearing so we don’t stand out too much.

Well, I’ll tell you what. God created us to stand out. He created us to be different. He created us to serve him and to conform to His and only His will. While we’re so focused on pleasing other people in our lives, we forget to try and please the One who created us. And do you know what I figured out pleases Him? Our branches.

As I kept working on my tree and looking at it I realized that it just wasn’t going to look right until I put the trimmings on the branches. The final touches. The fruit, if you will. See, the tree itself wasn’t that pretty, and it was a little misshapen, but when I put the trimmings on its branches, it became beautiful. I got so many compliments on my tree. The trimmings were just beautiful.

To me, I was the tree. I wasn’t all that good at much and didn’t like myself a lot of times and I was constantly being bent to be formed to someone’s expectations, but all the while, deep down, my heart was to do God’s will in my life. You know what makes me beautiful? The things that God has done in other peoples’ lives through me…my branches.

Most of the time I don’t even know my branches are being trimmed. Sometimes I’ll just say a nice word or smile and maybe brighten someone’s day. But then there are other times when God lets me know that what I said or did had an impact on that person’s life and that my branches were going to be beautiful.

Father, help me to always live for You even when I feel ashamed and pressured to be what I’m not. Help me to see that everything I say and do is always being watched by someone who You’ve put in my path for a reason and that my branches can be made beautiful through that relationship. Amen.