I love their shape, pattern and texture - their character, if you will. It's not the leaves so much, although I do love them; but mostly, it's the trunk, limbs, branches and twigs that have fascinated me since boyhood. A tree is like a muscular body rising from the earth and reaching with its fingers into the clouds. The trunk grips the earth with tenacity, anchoring the tree and absorbing nutrition from the soil beneath. A complex system of veins and arteries run through it, carrying that nutrition from the deepest roots to the highest tip of the tiniest leaf. A tree is a mysterious world into which a person might climb and live happily, at least in his mind.

I'm intrigued by the opposites that exist in a tree: strength in the trunk and limbs; but then delicacy in the branches, twigs and leaves. When I look at a tree, I see God. I see His strength, majesty and perseverance; but then I also see His love, patience and tenderness.

The fact that birds and other creatures make their homes in trees makes them seem even more fascinating. I once watched a mother bird coaxing her babies out of their nest onto the surrounding branches of a cherry tree outside my windows. Using food as an enticement, she patiently lured each to the end of a branch, and then watched as they flew away, never to return to her again. It was touching and sad.

Every spring, that cherry tree would burst into a blizzard of pink blossoms outside my windows. It was one of God's special graces in my life. A few years later, the tree surgeon's saw cut the cherry tree down, and I knew it was time to find a new place to live.

Whenever I see someone chopping away at a tree, it's as if they were destroying part of my own life. Somehow, I feel responsible for the trees in my life. I love them because, for whatever reason, God has allowed me to appreciate all the time and effort that went into making them. And I appreciate all the history older trees have "seen" - their "wisdom," if you will. I feel like, somehow, they connect us with God.

Every tree has its own personality. CS Lewis actually described the trees in his children's book, Prince Caspian, as if they were people: "[Lucy] knew exactly how each of these trees would talk if only she could wake them, and what sort of human form it would put on. She looked at the silvery birch: it would have a soft, showery voice and would look like a slender girl, with hair blown all about her face, and fond of dancing. She looked at the oak: he would be a wizened, but hearty old man with a frizzled beard and warts on his face and hands, and hair growing out of the warts. She looked at the beech under which she was standing. Ah! – she would be the best of all. She would be a gracious goddess, smooth and stately, a lady of the wood."

JRR Tolkien also loved trees. His favorite was the Austrian pine. In Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers, his trees come alive and form an army to fight against the evil Mordor. There has always been something magical about trees. They aren't just plants. In many cases, they are the oldest living thing around. They tie the earth to the sky. They are the ones that reveal the presence of the wind, and announce a coming storm. They surround our homes, protecting us from the brunt of the storm. They give us their blossoms in spring, their shade in summer, their fruit in autumn. They truly are wonderful.

I bought my first Christmas tree this year. It was a beautiful, nine-foot Frazier fir from the mountains of North Carolina. I almost hated to decorate it, I liked it so much just as it was. It drank about a quart of water a day for the first month, and then a pint a day for the next several weeks. It lasted almost two months. I hated to get rid of it, but for that brief period, I had a real tree living inside my home. It was like having a little piece of forest right in my living room. How happy I was.

My favorite trees are the big muscular ones, like beeches and oaks; but I also love wispy, delicate firs and lacy, smooth cherries. Evergreens hold a special lure, because they remind me of the mountains. Apple trees are funny, walnut trees scary, palm trees exotic, cedars primitive, maples dreamy, birches austere.

When I walk beneath and among trees, I feel like I'm walking in a cathedral. Their trunks are the pillars, their branches the beams, their leaves the carvings on the walls. They're beautiful and inspiring - God's living cathedrals.

Here is Joyce Kilmer's poem, "Trees," which pretty much says it all:

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the sweet earth's flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.

Joyce Kilmer (1886-1918)

That is an expression of love, not just for trees, but for God. Conversely, trees are just one of the many ways God has said to us, "I love you." Hallmark cards has nothing on Him.



Waitsel Smith, January 20, 2008

Text © 2008 Waitsel Smith. All Rights Reserved.