Tree of Wisdom

When I was a little girl, my cousins, my sister and I would often spend the weekend with my grandma and grandpa Holder. We loved to stay the night because that meant we could sleep in the feather bed, take a bath in the wash tub in the back yard and eat goose berries off the bush behind the house until we were sick to our stomachs. Grandma was the kind of woman who got up early, cooked a 3-course breakfast and expected us kids to get up out of that feather bed and eat it with as much enthusiasm as she had while cooking it. I will say that didn’t always happen. Have you ever slept on a feather bed?  If you have then you know that once you get in that bed, you do not want to get out of it, even for biscuits and gravy!!

My grandma was a constant source of faith in my life though.  There was one thing that you could always depend on when you went to grandmas, and that was, come Sunday morning, you would be going to church. My grandparents did not own a vehicle so on most Sundays a neighbor would pick them up and take them to that small country church. I vividly remember those Sunday mornings when all the cousins, my sister and I would pile into the back of the neighbor’s truck and make our way down that old dusty gravel road to church. The neighbors were an elderly couple that lived a few miles away but were always faithful to my grandparents when they needed a ride. He was a thin man, gentle in spirit and meek in stature. His wife was a sweet friend to my grandma. I still remember them like it was yesterday.  

To my knowledge though, the neighbor man that drove us to church faithfully on Sunday mornings, never stepped foot in that church building. How ironic is it that he facilitated my grandparents church attendance and yet not his own. I can still picture him sitting in the church parking lot, in the pickup truck, window rolled down, under a large walnut tree, patiently waiting to drive us back home. I often wonder why he didn’t go inside. He was so close, and I know that he probably heard every song and sermon through the walls of that simple church building. Yet he never walked in.

How sad is it that many of us have been so close to Jesus, just like this man…… we hear about Him, we know He exists, we make some effort to be close to Him…... yet we never open that door and fully accept Him into our lives.

This picture is of the very tree he sat under. It is no longer big and beautiful like the one painted in my mind as a child. However, it is a reminder to me that life and nature are forever changing. That we have a certain number of days on this earth and that we make choices every day. We choose either to walk in or to sit under the tree.

Proverbs 3:18 She (Wisdom) is a tree of life to those who lay hold of her; those who hold her fast are called blessed.