The Pressing
What happens everywhere, everyday, all day?
Rarely makes a noise, can’t be touched.
Has no color. Alters everything it touches.
It can be a noun or a verb.
Sometimes we despise it, other times we love it.
We enjoy watching it more than we enjoy experiencing it.
What is it?
Pressure.
Standing in Nazareth, beside an ancient olive press, I listened in awe as our guide explained the age-old process of transforming ripe, bitter tasting olives into oil. The olives, fresh from harvest, would be placed in a stone, circular, grooved trough. A large round mill-stone attached to a wooden pole from its center would be rolled around and around the circular stone trough. As the olives were crushed, their oil would be pressed to run down a grooved crevice that led to jars. Stone and wood, clay jars and olives — the room felt like a place that should be regarded highly. It had done this very work for centuries. No generational or societal opinions had altered its steady, honorable, beneficial work. The stone pressed oil from olives; it would press the same olives three times. In ancient days, the first pressing would produce the best oil which would be used for anointing purposes in Holy places. The second pressing would be used to prepare food in homes. The third and final pressing would be placed in lamps used to bring light to homes after the sun went down.
Three pressings. Three purposes. Three values.
Think of the olives placed in those troughs. Pause for a moment and let yourself see yourself as the olives. Do you feel pressed? At every turn? Do you feel spent, crushed, used up? Life presses us in unexpected ways doesn’t it?
Surely the small olive, if it could speak, would want to say, “Wait a minute here, I was doing fine on my tree under the sun. I’ve done exactly what I was told to do, grow! I’ve been a good little olive…but now you’ve pulled me from normal, robbed me of the sunlight, placed me in this dark hard trough and you…are…crushing…me. I’m no longer what I was. I’ve been destroyed. I no longer even look like the tiny olive I use to be.”
Will we allow ourselves to look intently at this little olive to see that while it is no longer the olive it use to be…instead, now, it can bring goodness and benefit to so many people and in so many ways. The pretty green olive on the tree was just that, a pretty, green (yet bitter tasting) olive. But when it was pressed, it became so much more and brought goodness worthy of anointing for heads, food for stomachs, and light for homes. The latter form of the olive was so much greater than the former. But to achieve the latter, the former had to give up what it was.
The pressing.
The same is true of seeds of any and every kind. If the seed is never planted, if its outer shell is not broken, if it does not die to itself in the darkness of the soil and feel the soaking waters drown it — then there is no chance it will ever become what it could become — a plant growing tall under the warmth of the sun and bringing new life with an abundance of more seeds.
The same is true of a baby. If it does not grow and face the challenges of learning to eat food, sit up, crawl, walk, talk… if it only suckles at its mother’s breast for years and years without facing the pressure of maturing, then that child will never become what it was born to be. It’s purpose for living will be missed.
Pressing.
Life presses us. Parents press us. Coaches press us. Teachers press us. Preachers press us. Employers press us. Bills press us. Gravity presses us. Doctors press us. Hunger presses us. Emotions press us. Growth presses us…shall I go on.
Society presses us. Culture presses us. Expectations press us (our own or others). Peers press us (if we allow them to). Social media presses us (if we give it our ear).
And in all the pressing from all the demands of life I find that we too easily get caught up in the whirl of it all and forget, overlook, deny, or refuse to see the actual reason why we are here on this spinning planet. Our Father God will not demand His good way…He will not capture us and throw us into the pressing trough like the olive harvester. Instead, He invites us. He hopes. He asks us to willingly lay ourselves down and give ourselves to Him. He doesn’t kidnap us against our will. He won’t demand our white-flag surrender. He lets us know, in His Holy Pages, that He wants to give us an eternity of rest and peace — but we must first willingly allow His hand to press us into becoming what He has purposed in His heart for us to be, what He longed for when He created us. And it will be good.
He does not create us in our completed versions. He creates us to become MORE if we will hold fast to Him and choose His way above our way.
Then, if we are willing, we can be brave as we knowingly step into the good pressing. Becoming a Christian does not mean our life becomes easy. No. Becoming a Christian means we are asking God to refine and define us according to His good plans…and the remodeling work He performs in us will be as hard as the stone is to the olive. We will die to who we think we are…but we will emerge finally able to accomplish and do what we never imagined possible. Not by the world’s standards, but instead newly gauged with eternity’s caliber.
Interestingly, we won’t summit these great heights following our own ways and through our own understanding. Instead, we will have learned a most valuable lesson — that our ways are insufficient and His plan is all-sufficient. We will know that our dreams will be like tarnished silverware and His dreams for us will be like purest gold. We will understand that while our outer shell is aging, our inner-soul is glowing, becoming brighter and clearer as it reflects the very Light of our Redeemer. We will long for others to grab hold of His healing robes because we have learned that nothing else will ever compare to what He does in us when we lay ourselves down in His hands.
There is a line that must be crossed in the pressing.
For the olive it’s the line between the comfortable tree branch and the hard stone trough.
For the seed it’s the line between being tucked all safe and secure within its shell and the dark, wet place underground.
For the baby it’s the line between being coddled and cuddled in cradling arms and the pressure felt on crawling knees.
For you and me it’s the line between having our own way with our own plans and the surrender to His way and His plans.
Never forgetting that if the olive stays on the tree branch it will eventually wither and fall off — having never benefitted anyone.
If the seed stays nestled in its shell-covering it will remain safe but it will never grow and know what it felt like to bloom in the sun.
If the baby stays coddled in its momma’s arms it will have a soft life of ease but it will never know what it could have been, never see where it could have gone, but most importantly it will never have become beneficial to what matters most for eternity.
It will live soft and die soft when the world desperately needs brave, focused, courageous people who live for the sake of what is good and right, true and honorable.
The line is found in every person’s life. Some see it and bravely step across it. Those are the people who care more about what God cares about than what they themselves think, feel, want, or have. Those are the people who know what it is to live the fullness of the life they were created for. They sparkle.
Oh but some souls will see the line and shrink back from it because they do no want to surrender what they have, at the risk of not getting more of what they want. They bury their treasure. They make their plans and work their plans. They might look good for a season or two…but in the end they never see the horizon they were born to cross. Despair becomes their portion — but that was never their Father’s plan for them.
Life will press us dear one. That’s not optional. But what is optional is whether or not we will run to, grab hold of, and lean into the pressing that carries us from what we are — and crosses the line — into the holy place — that changes us into what we can become.
To be the willing olive that stays in the stone-trough-places of life, allowing the first pressing for the holy anointing of life, the second pressing for the nourishment of life, and the third pressing so more and more LIGHT can come in the lives of many.
For in that place, GOD ACCOMPLISHES HEAVEN’S PLANS in us, around us, through us and for the sake of many.
It’s the pressed soul that drips of, “Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven.” Matthew 6:10
It’s the pressed heart that beats with, “If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord.” Romans 14:8
It’s the pressed life that breathes, “I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.” Galatians 2:20
May we join in the song of the old Scottish man who — after his many pressings in the trough of life — had lived bravely on the good side of the God-line. While walking, with cane in hand beside his grandson, along the shoreline of a high loch-lake, he suddenly dropped his cane and began dancing and singing, seemingly forgetting he was not alone, not remembering others could see him. And what were the words of the song he sang aloud…
"Me Father He loves me, aye me Father He loves me so."
