Life Matters - August 31, 2022
I was going to use the pickup again after the noon meal, so I parked it in the welcoming shade of the maple tree in our side yard. By the driveway, past our house, leading to the barn. I rolled down the windows and breathed in deeply of the gentle summer breeze. It was a welcome respite from working in the hot summer sun and conducive to contemplative reflection. Some refreshing of memory…
Seventeen years ago, we planted a maple tree. A young sapling that I had bought at the local nursery. With a dream. A dream fulfilled by our dog, Bernie, flopping in its grassy shade on days like this. A dream fulfilled by the bird nest in its branches. A dream fulfilled by this pickup parked in its cooling shade. A guy sitting in the cab with the windows down and enjoying the cooling breeze. It had begun with a dream. And then the purchase. The digging. The planting. The watering.
The stormy winds had battered the dream. With a supporting post the sapling may have survived. But life was bust. The one cold winter morning my concerned gaze couldn’t find the little tree. And then found it. The battered sapling was laying in the snow, still partially attached, but the tree had no chance. It was broken down. Twisted. The dream? Not quite dead yet. I could buy a new sapling in the spring. It would have to start over. A one-year setback. But then what?
Spring came. The usual earthy smells. The usual greening of grass and trees. It was time to think about a new maple sapling. And think I did. But I was too busy to plant another sapling. Anyhow, would it fare any better than the first? All that was left of the original maple sapling was a little sucker growing out the side of its little stump, which was all that was left after I’d cleaned up the dead sapling. I was not impressed by the sucker and remained unimpressed even as green buds appeared and became leaves because that sucker was growing out a side of the stump and leaned sideways.
I was impressed, however, by the expression of life. The impression of roots having been grounded under the visible surface drawing water and nutrients to the brave little expression of life in the above-ground light of day. So, we mowed around it. Out of habit? Some sort of intuition? Whatever it was that first summer, by the second summer it was obvious that the little sucker had become a sapling well on its way. Its growth was slow those first years and it retained its leaning shape. A leaning that bothered me enough to bring up the words, numerous times in my mind, of the farmer in scripture who said of the fig tree, “cut it down, why cumbereth it the ground?”
But we let it grow. And grow it did! Those first years it didn’t grow much. It must have been establishing its root system because from about its fifth year on it became more and more obvious that we had a tree. It was coming out of is lean more every year and filling out. I consoled myself that if it never became what I dreamed of, at least I’m growing firewood, it was not all for naught.
Now I parked in its shade and reveled in the cool breeze fanning me as it ruffled my hair and brought the scents of a fruitful summer through the open windows, stirring memories and thoughts.
The tree has grown into a fine young maple tree, it has branched out and fulfilled my dream. Or almost. Somewhere along the way as I kept noticing that slight lean to the northeast, I had noticed that the lean was away from the house. The possibility of falling on the house in a storm once it matured at 50, 60 or 70 feet tall was greatly diminished by its lean away from the house. No, the tree does not quite fit my dream. It is even better. If a storm ever takes it down, we’ll have firewood and likely no harm beyond the tree itself.
Life on this spinning orb has a way of being stormy at times, does it not? When the storms of this life hit us, twisting and turning, seeming to wring the very life out of us, may we allow the weathering to drive our roots ever deeper. Into the refreshing water and sustaining nutrients of God’s Word. “Let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly…” (Col. 3:26)
Life Matters!