Dear Ones,
One of the things I particularly enjoy about summer is the trees. It is such a joy to watch them leaf out with renewed life in all the glory of spring! The autumn colors are beautiful, too, but rather short-lived.
Coming from the bald Saskatchewan prairie, I have always had a special affection for trees. I think part of that came, too, from my maternal Grandfather who emigrated from England to homestead on the prairies around the turn of the 20th century.
When a little girl, and we would go to Grandpa’s, I would watch intently for the clump of dark green hugging the horizon of the vast, arid, rolling prairie – like an oasis in the desert. I always watched for it with childish eagerness. It was not a natural oasis, but one that Grandpa had coaxed out of the dry and stony ground. Years before, he had brought in wagonloads of young and tender saplings and planted them in long, straight rows like ranks of vigilant sentinels along the North and West portion of his homestead on which he had built his little frame and shingle house.
Encouraging their survival had taken hours of back-breaking toil. The grateful full-grown poplars had rewarded him with much needed protection against the violent prairie dust-storms that swept across the hot and barren plains, and the bitter winter blizzards that piled the snow almost to their very tops and, but for them, would have buried the little house.
I loved those trees, and spent many a pleasant hour playing in their shade. They were my private haven when the chores were done. Their beckoning grassy glades were my castle where lived princes and princesses, fairy queens, heroes and heroines. Those trees surrounded Uncle Tom’s Cabin; they hid from my view Heidi’s Mountain; they were the estate where Elsie Dinsmore lived; they were Marcella’s back yard where she had tea parties for Raggedy Ann, and all of her dolls.
Lying flat on my back I would gaze up at the tops of the trees, their fluttering green leaves framing a patch of azure blue sky, and idly wonder why I had been taught that green and blue don’t go together when God could make them match so beautifully. With all my love of poetry,
I think that I shall never see
a poem lovely as a tree;
A tree whose hungry mouth is pressed
against the earth’s sweet flowing breast;
A tree that looks at God all day,
and lifts her leafy arms to pray;
A tree that may in summer wear
a nest of robins in her hair;
Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
who intimately lives with rain.
Poems are made by fools like me,
but only God can make a tree.
(Joyce Kilmer, 1886-1918)
Our Lord Jesus identified Himself with the prophecy of Isaiah. “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me because the Lord has anointed me to preach good tidings to the meek; He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound;…to provide for them that grieve in Zion, to give unto them beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, the garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair, THAT (I love the “thats” in the Scriptures) they might be called TREES OF RIGHTEOUSNESS, THE PLANTING OF THE LORD, that HE might be glorified.” (Isaiah 61:3)
And then Jeremiah gives a similar promise: “Blessed (happy) is the (wo)man who trusts in the Lord, and whose HOPE the Lord is. (S)he shall be as a TREE planted by the waters, that spreads out her roots by the river, and shall not fear when heat comes, but her leaves are always green; and shall not be anxious in the year of drought, neither shall cease from yielding fruit.” (Jer. 17:7,8)
The blessed man of Psalm 1 is also likened to ” a TREE planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in its season, his leaves do not wither, and whatever he does prospers.”
And one more reference that I love from David’s Psalms: “The righteous shall flourish like the PALM TREE; they shall grow like a CEDAR in Lebanon. Those that be PLANTED IN THE HOUSE OF THE LORD shall flourish in the courts of our God. They shall still bring forth fruit in old age; they shall be full of sap and green…” (Psalm 92:12-15)
The sap is the vital aqueous fluid of the plant that transports the materials necessary for growth. I believe it represents the Holy Spirit Who dwells within the Believer, and produces the Fruit of the Spirit which Galatians tells us is:-
Love – Joy – Peace – Longsuffering – Kindness – Goodness – Faithfulness – Meekness – Self-control.
“…If these things be in you, and abound, they make you that you shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.” (2 Peter 1:8)
‘May God, the giver of hope, fill you with continual joy and peace because you trust in
Him-so that you may have abundant hope through the power of the Holy Spirit ‘
(Romans 15:13 – Weymouth)
In Agape, Eulene
