Trees as Teachers

I reclined beside my 3 year-old daughter the other evening on the back patio while she finished her dinner. We had all finished eating, and the rest were cleaning up. As I lay there looking toward the sky, I noticed something I rarely stop to consider: the tops of the pine trees swaying in the breeze. They looked pleasant and lazy, bending with the wind.

Down the tree line behind my neighbor’s home, I noticed among the green tree-tops a brown tree-top: a fully mature tree that was thoroughly dead. And then I saw how still he was against his neighbors. At that moment, I marveled how much like the dead tree I am and how much like the green trees I want to be. If breezes are like small trials (you know the kind: inconvenient, troublesome, try-your-patience kind of troubles), then most of the time I’m like the hard, inflexible dead branches whose leaves make no pleasant rustle in the breeze, but instead are brittle and may only break off if the wind is strong enough. Green, life-filled branches are so much more pleasant to watch and learn from. Here’s a prayer: Lord, make me green with life, not hard and dead.