Ezekiel 17:1-10. The Lord speaks to Israel in a riddle, an allegory. He tells Ezekiel to tell Israel of a majestic eagle who takes the top of a giant cedar and replants it in a land of trade and merchants. He plants it in fertile soil by abundant waters and it sprouts and becomes a healthy, low spreading vine with its branches turned toward him and roots that remain where planted. But there was another eagle who attracts the vine and it turns its branches towards him, so that he might water it. He digs up the vine and transplants it hoping to make it bear fruit for him. But, God asks, will the transplanted vine prosper? It will not take much for its shallow roots to be pulled up. It will wither and dry up because it does not have good roots.

We need roots - a proper anchor for our lives and for our souls. God puts us where he wants us to grow those roots in faith and love of him. He knows where each of our individual vines will prosper best - and which soil and which obstacles our own particular root system will thrive in. Men - leaders, and kings not appointed by God - do not know these things for us. They tend to see people as a commodity, a means to an end. So when the second eagle tries to transplant the healthy vine, he is doing it for his purposes, not God's. And he, of course, does not know what is best - so the vine withers and dies.

Our roots have to be in the soil in which God plants us. It is not always perfect, because this world is fallen, and it may be far from our homeland for a while (as is this vine - the exiles in Babylon), but it is always where God has placed us, and he knows where he wants us and for how long. Eventually, God will bring this vine home - back to Jerusalem where he always intended it to be. But that cannot happen until it is ready to be transplanted. When the Jewish leaders took matters into their own hands to make a pact with Egypt while in Babylon, they substituted their judgment for God's. The vine will wither when it is tended to by men only, and it will thrive when tended to by God.

When we accept the place that we are, the circumstances God has placed us in, and trust, growing healthy roots there, we will thrive. We may be a "low spreading vine" that is, not powerful in the eyes of the world, but we will spread our branches, our influence, in the area we find ourselves, and it will be for his purposes.