In Times Like These, Plant a Tree

 

We planted a tree on Friday.

It is a red oak tree, and we planted it for Shawn.

I’d ordered it in June for fall planting. It arrived at the nursery weeks ago, but somehow I never received the message. I found out it was ready only a few days before my family, the family I so rarely see, came to stay.

We have two shovels. My husband, brother, brother-in-law, and nephew took turns digging. My brother’s wife held the baby who was born the day of Shawn’s memorial service. The baby who shares his name.

The wind was a little too blustery for a nine-month-old more accustomed to Texas heat, but instead of carrying him back inside, I tried to block the wind with my body. I thought of how the tree will grow as he grows.

We tipped the tree out of its container and watered it well. I suppose its leaves were green when it was first set aside for us at the nursery, but now they are mottled with dark red like dried blood and bright red like the berries on our winterberry shrubs.

This tree is young, but it already knows what every tree knows: there is a space between life and death, and it has its own particular beauty.

 

 

The story of our world is a story of three trees.

In the beginning there was a tree of life, but we fell from that flourishing green perfection and went on falling until it seemed that death and evil and suffering would always have the last word.

Until Jesus.

He was like us, yet he did not fall. On a cross fashioned from a broken tree, he submitted to death and suffering, and so defeated them.

Now the power that carried him from death to life is transforming us from the inside out. And it is transforming our world from the inside out. One day that transformation will be complete, the distance between the way things are and the way they were always meant to be will be erased, and we will live in the green shade of another tree of life.

The leaves of that third tree, we are told, “are for the healing of the nations” (Rev. 22:2).

 

 

I can think of few things I want more.

I can think of few things we need more because words wound as well as sticks and stones and bombs.

Is it only a far-off dream? A happily-ever-after story we pull like wool over our eyes during days of trouble?

The radiant leaves of Shawn’s tree say otherwise. When the wind picks up, I hear them whisper, “The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life” (Proverbs 11:30).

Because of Shawn, a tree of life has spread its roots through our family and among many friends. It is as real as this red oak tree. Things that were broken in our hearts or our relationships or our ways of living in the world are being made right. Healing we did not even know we needed has begun.

Our world is caught somewhere between death and life. It is like a tree glowing with autumn color. It breaks our hearts even as it dazzles our eyes.

But the seeds for that third tree have already been sown.

In us.

*

Controversies may swirl and bullets may fly (both metaphorical and all too real), but we are not afraid. We are not dismayed.

We are too busy planting and tending trees.

And that will make all the difference in the world.