It's been a crazy week here, with vet and doctor appointments, meetings, concerns, worries, obstacles, essential-items breaking and not being fixed on time (like my washing machine and the bobcat!), failures, frustrations, and unexpected wrenches thrown into already too-tight plans.
I'm feeling choked! So, I thought I'd share this story of an oak tree on our property from a few years ago. It helped me to get perspective today, and hopefully it will help you too. The pictures are of the oak tree(s) today - look how it's flourishing without the poison oak around it!
THE CHOKED OAK
It was tall. It was green. It was bushy.
But something wasn’t right.
I crossed my arms
and looked up at the fat, green oak tree.
Beside me, my husband sighed. I
shook my head. “I don’t want to do
it. Do you want to do it?”
“I don’t want to
do it.”
I stepped
back. “Someone’s got to do it.”
“It’s an ugly
job.”
“That thing will
be right outside the window once we build the cabin. We can’t have it looking like that.”
“I know. But still . . . ” Bryan crossed his arms over his chest.
I put my hand on
my hips.
For
a moment, we both stared at the oak and didn’t say a word. Shiny green and red leaves poked from all
parts of the tree. But they weren’t oak
leaves. Thick vines twisted around the
trunk and branches. Those didn’t belong
to the oak either.
I
shivered.
The
green wasn’t the green of a healthy oak.
Instead it was a sign of poison.
A huge batch of poison oak had grown up into the tree and twined around
every branch. The tree was thick with
it. Lush and green, but with nasty
poison.
Bryan
tugged on his sleeves. “Okay, I’ll do it
then. But get the bleach ready for the
laundry.”
Four
hours later, the laundry was in, Bryan was taking a cool shower, and the tree
was clear. I tromped up the hill and
looked at it. It wasn’t lush
anymore. And it wasn’t green. Scraggly branches with a few sad leaves
spread from the trunk and reached toward the sky.
“Ugh,
it looks awful,” I murmured.
As
I looked at the now-bare soil beneath it, I noticed there were no acorns
scattered on the ground, and no little baby oaks growing around it.
Then
it struck me. That big, strong oak was
stifled by that little vine. The oak was
bigger, taller, thicker, and more established.
And yet, that small, thin, poisonous weed had nearly choked the life
from it.
As
I stood and gazed at the tree, I was reminded of Jesus’ parable from Matthew
13, Mark 4, and Luke 8. In that story,
seed fell on four different types of soil.
In the third, the seed sprouted among thorns and the life was choked out
the plants, just as the poison oak had choked the oak tree. Jesus likened the thorns to the worries of
this life, the deceitfulness of wealth, and desires for other things.
If
something as small as poison oak could choke the life from a big, strong oak, how
much more vulnerable was I to worry and wrong desires? After all, there are so many things in life
to worry about – finances, schooling, job concerns, health, family crises. It’s easy to allow those to twine around my
mind and shove poisonous leaves through my branches until there are acorns of
God’s word dropping into my daily life.
No little oaks springing up around me.
I had to ask if I was I producing any kind of crop in God’s Kingdom. Was it growing stronger through me, or was I
just barely getting by?
As
I asked those questions, I realized that I had some poison oak in my life –
worries that kept me from focusing on God, goals I was pursuing that were good
but weren’t God’s plan, things that were distracting me from fully living the
life God had for me. And just like we
did for the oak tree, I had to cut off the poison oak at its base and peel away
all the vines from the branches of my life.
Over the past few
years, we’ve kept the poison oak away from that oak tree, and now the tree is
full, healthy, and green with leaves all its own. In time, it recovered from the stranglehold
of the poison oak. It became the
beautiful tree God meant it to be.
And I know that if
I, too, keep the thorns away, I can be full of the greenness of true life. I can be all God intends me to be. I can be a tall, strong oak in the Kingdom of
God.
But I am like an olive tree flourishing in the house of God;
I trust in God’s unfailing love for ever and ever.
-Psalm 52:8
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