Sweet Essence

Putting Down Roots

This humorous story, told in Phillip Gulley's Front Porch Tales, illustrates a point. 

I had an old neighbor when I was growing up named Dr. Gibbs.  He didn't look like any doctor I'd ever known.  Every time I saw him, he was wearing denim overalls and a straw hat,  the front brim of which was green-sunglass plastic.  He smiled a lot, a smile that matched his hat -- old and crinkly and well--worn.  He never yelled at us for playing in his yard.  I remember him as someone who was a lot nicer than circumstances warranted. 

When Doctor Gibbs wasn't  saving lives, he was planting trees.  His house sat on ten acres and his life 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 years after I left home. Every now and again, I walk by his house and look 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 chest 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 thing about those trees of Dr. Gibbs.  Adversity and deprivation seemed to benefit them in ways comfort and ease never could....

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 wind blows, we won't be swept asunder! 

Let your roots grow deep. Steep yourself in the Word of God. 

"Live Like a Jesus Freak"