By Caleb Julin
Columnist
If you haven’t noticed from reading either my column posts or my blog, it seems that the Lord speaks to me the most clearly through his creation.
Perhaps that is why I love the hymn, “This is My Father’s World” when it says, “This is my Father’s world: / he shines in all that’s fair; / in the rustling grass I hear him pass; / he speaks to me everywhere.”
In the same way that an artist puts a piece of themselves into their art, we can learn about God through his creation. Last month God was teaching me through storms, while this month I’ve discovered an interesting truth from the trees.
For the first of the two lessons I learned, I want to tell you a story. I’ll save you the cliché, “Once upon a time,” and jump straight in.
In a neighborhood somewhere in southern Florida, there lived a man named Joshua. Now, one day one of Joshua’s neighbor’s planted a seed in Joshua’s yard and it grew into a young sapling. Joshua was struck by the beauty of his young tree and decided to nurture and grow it into a strong tree that would shade his yard. Daily, you could find Joshua in his yard watering and fertilizing his tree.
As the years passed, the tree grew into a beautiful young oak—far from the magnificent tree that it would become with time, but beautiful none the less. It had a strong trunk, good bark and showed signs of new growth, sprouting bright green on the tips of the branches.
One day, while Joshua was out watering his tree, a storm came over his house so quickly and so fiercely that he didn’t have time take cover. The wind blew so strongly that it made the ground look like it had shifted a foot to the right and it threatened to sweep him away.
Reacting simply by instinct, Joshua grabbed onto the trunk of his tree and held on for dear life. As he clung to the tree, he watched everything around him blow away, either destroyed or never to be seen again.
As much as Joshua desperately wanted to make a break for shelter, he knew that the moment he released his grip on the tree, he himself would be swept away by the storm.
Clutching the tree for what seemed to be hours, but probably was more like minutes, he realized that the storm was beginning to pass and that he was going to make it through alive.
When it was finally safe for Joshua to let go of the tree, he realized that, without it, he would have surely perished in the storm. It was in that moment that Joshua swore to himself that he was going to do whatever was necessary for that tree to grow into the biggest, strongest tree that it could, so that if he ever found himself caught in another storm, he would have something to cling to.
Keeping my story in mind, I want you to replace the word “tree” with “faith”.
As Christians, our faith began when someone shared the gospel with us and planted a seed. Out of that seed grew a faith of our own. As we nurture our faith through prayer and devotion, it will grow stronger with every day.
But as we know all too well, the skies are not always blue and times are not always easy. Storms and trials are bound to come our way and test the strength of our faith. How well we took care of our faith determines whether or not it will be able to weather the storm.
A tree that has not been taken care of will slowly die on the inside. While the shell of a tree may remain visible, all it takes is a strong enough gust of wind to blow it over. We have all seen in the news or personally known Christians who have appeared to be great figures of the faith, but have been destroyed when a trial comes their way. If our faith is not nurtured, then, just like the tree, big or small, it will come down in a trial.
In the same way, a tree that has been taken care of will hold fast when a storm comes by. A storm that might have been a trial for a young tree might seem like nothing more than a breeze to an older tree that has grown large with time. Just so, a Christian who takes care of their faith will find that they have the strength to get through increasingly harder trials as they come.
Psalm 1:1-3 says, “Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the path of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers; but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in his law he meditates day and night. He will be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that brings forth its fruit in its season; its leaf will not wither, and whatever he does will prosper” (MEV).
I write this to myself as much as anyone who reads this. It is easy to forget God when times are good because we feel we don’t need him. But these are the times it is most crucial for us to be building our faith. Storms and droughts don’t stay away forever. They will come.
Instead, let us all try to be like the man in Psalm 1 and plant our tree by the water so that our faith will never cease growing.
