Scrub oaks of righteousness

The house we lived in when I was little had a beautiful, tall oak tree in the backyard. I loved to stand under it and crane my neck back to try to see all the way through the curvy leaves to the very top. It provided shade in the hot and humid Midwest summers and vivid color each autumn. I loved to trace my finger along the ins and outs of the leaves’ edges when they floated down to signal that winter was drawing near.

Here in Colorado, we have plenty of oaks too—just not the kind I grew up with. These mountain oaks aren’t majestic, towering trees, but much shorter, scraggly shrubs aptly nicknamed “scrub oaks.” They are a staple of every hiking trail and mountain meadow. Unlike their oak tree cousins, these gnarled scrub oaks don’t exactly engender a sense of awe or an admiration of beauty when you look at them. They have all the marks of a gritty survivor of an extreme, high desert climate. 

Scrub oaks can withstand high winds, tough winters, forest fires, and rocky soil that has killed many a prettier plant meant for milder climates. Their leaves are much smaller than their oak tree cousins, but each scrub oak leaf stores water to help resist the effects of drought. They have underground systems that keep growing deeper and sprouting new trunks with each snowy winter and parched summer to create vast colonies of scrub oak that can grow by frigid mountain streams or down steep, rocky canyons. They also allow other species to survive our high desert climate by providing shelter and food for many of our native animals.

Midwestern native that I am, when I hear these words from the prophet Isaiah, “They may be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord” (Is. 61:3), I picture one of the beautiful towering oak trees of my childhood with graceful limbs reaching heavenward and trunks so wide and ringed that even the most literal tree huggers couldn’t hope to fit their arms around them. 

A majestic tree to reflect the majesty of our righteous God. What could be more fittingly called “a planting of the Lord”?

But the journey of maturing into the righteous standing that is already ours in Christ rarely appears majestic. For me, it has much more closely resembled the scraggly scrub oak than a mighty oak tree, more marked by the resilience of a weathered plant determined to flourish despite constant exposure to the elements than an established stateliness.

The only plants that can flourish here in these dry summers and angled landscapes are those that know in every cell of their being there is only one means of survival, whose roots stretch downward ever-deeper toward the source of life-sustaining groundwater. The image of a thirsty desert shrub as a symbol of righteousness may seem disappointing, laughable even, in comparison to a towering oak tree. Only by seeing with the eyes of Jesus could we call it beautiful. 

Jesus says in his Sermon on the Mount, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled.” The rocky and dry conditions we endure—frayed relationships, persistent temptation, spiritual warfare, losses and disappointments of all kinds—and our hunger and thirst for all that is good, right, and true in the midst of them, take a toll on our hearts just as hunger and thirst for water takes a toll on the plants that grow here in the high desert. He sees our need, and in him, we are promised a greater filling and fuller satisfaction that we can imagine. 

Jesus selects the the opening verses of the “oaks of righteousness” passage in Isaiah when he teaches in his hometown:

“The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor;
he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives,
and the opening of the prison to those who are bound;
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Is. 61:1-2).

Jesus concludes his reading of these words by saying, “Today, this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing” (Luke 4:21).

Jesus is the One with the power and the authority, as Isaiah goes on to prophesy,

“To grant to those who mourn in Zion—
to give them a beautiful headdress instead of ashes,
the oil of gladness instead of mourning,
the garment of praise instead of a faint spirit;
that they may be called oaks of righteousness,
the planting of the Lord, that he may be glorified” (v. 3)

This scraggly, storied righteousness that is growing in us is not of our own making. It is the gift and the work of the Lord. We confess our hunger and thirst for righteousness and seek it as a desert plant’s roots search for water, but God is the one who fills with his own righteousness. And in this, as decidedly un-majestic as we scrub oaks of righteousness appear, he is glorified.

“For as the earth brings forth its sprouts, and as a garden causes what is sown in it to sprout up, so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to sprout up before all the nations,” Isaiah says in v. 11. 

God is making for himself a garden, “a planting of the Lord,” a grove of scrub oaks connected at the roots, drinking deeply—together—from the Source of Life. He raises it up from the dry earth, lovingly looks upon it, and calls it beautiful.  In it, he sees his glory reflected back to him, now only in part, and one day in full.