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Growing roots
When I was growing up, I had an old neighbor named Dr. Gibbs. He didn’t
look like any doctor I’d ever known. He never yelled at us for playing in his
yard. I remember him as someone who was a lot nicer than circumstances
warranted.
When Dr. Gibbs wasn’t saving lives, he was planting trees. His house sat on
ten acres, and his life’s goal was to make it a forest.The good doctor had some
interesting theories concerning plant husbandry. He came from the “No pain, no
gain” school of horticulture. He never watered his new trees, which flew in the
face of conventional wisdom. Once I asked why. He said that watering plants
spoiled them, and that if you water them, each successive tree generation will
grow weaker and weaker. So you have to make things rough for them and weed out
the weenie trees early on.
He talked about how watering trees made for shallow roots, and how trees
that weren’t watered had to grow deep roots in search of moisture. I took him to
mean that deep roots were to be treasured.So he never watered his trees. He’d
plant an oak and, instead of watering it every morning, he’d beat it with a
rolled-up newspaper. Smack! Slap! Pow! I asked him why he did that, and he said
it was to get the tree’s attention.
Dr. Gibbs went to glory a couple of years after I left home. Every now and
again, I walked by his house and looked at the trees that I’d watched him plant
some twenty-five years ago. They’re granite strong now. Big and robust. Those
trees wake up in the morning and beat their chests and drink their coffee
black.I planted a couple of trees a few years back. Carried water to them for a
solid summer. Sprayed them. Prayed over them. The whole nine yards. Two years of
coddling has resulted in trees that expect to be waited on hand and foot.
Whenever a cold wind blows in, they tremble and chatter their branches. Sissy
trees.
Funny things about those trees of Dr. Gibbs’. Adversity and deprivation
seemed to benefit them in ways comfort and ease never could.Every night before I
go to bed, I check on my two sons. I stand over them and watch their little
bodies, the rising and falling of life within. I often pray for them. Mostly I
pray that their lives will be easy. But lately I’ve been thinking that it’s time
to change my prayer.This change has to do with the inevitability of cold winds
that hit us at the core. I know my children are going to encounter hardship, and
I’m praying they won’t be naive. There’s always a cold wind blowing
somewhere.
So I’m changing my prayer. Because life is tough, whether we want it to be
or not. Too many times we pray for ease, but that’s a prayer seldom met. What we
need to do is pray for roots that reach deep into the Eternal, so when the rains
fall and the winds blow, we won’t be swept asunder. |
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发表于 2016-7-10 16:15:07