The Testimony of Four Trees

The Dead Tree

Perhaps every neighborhood has one--the dreaded dead tree in a neighbor's yard that you hope does not fall on your house or car in the next severe storm. No one has to guess whether it's dead--it speaks for itself, with no life of its own, only the parasitic vines completely engulfing its one-time beauty. My neighbor had such a tree in her backyard--had, for it eventually fell on its own. Its demise was long overdue, but I suppose she hoped that her ignoring of its hopeless state would render its powers inert. She was wrong. I discovered this tree fallen one day after a severe storm with straight-line winds. First, I saw the wall of rain rushing towards my house like a horizontal cylinder, and when I found the tree that evening, I realized exactly what had happened. My neighbor wasn't home at the time, and I sent her pictures. Happily for her, this dead tree fell parallel with her house and towards my backyard. It didn't hurt anyone except the skunks that now had to find a new home.

What killed this tree? An insignificant little vine that was allowed to spread and spread, until it completely smothered the tree. A little snip here and a big snip there might have saved this tree. But it wasn't worth worrying about at the time, I guess--until, that is, it was too late to do anything except pay for the cleanup, since insurance wouldn't cover an "act of God" that hadn't damaged the house. I asked my neighbor recently what kind of tree this was, and she couldn't even remember. That's how utterly and completely the vine stole this tree's identity. Jesus would have described its fate like this: "The cares of this life took root and smothered this tree, until the gospel was choked out completely."

The Hollow Tree

This tree is far more sinister and more secretive. Like my live oak tree in Auburndale, Florida, that dropped damaging limbs during Hurricane Frances in 2004, the hollow tree looks alive and well. Its massive girth speaks of strength, not weakness. This tree, measuring easily five feet across and dozens of feet high, stood guard at the front of my house--until it didn't. It betrayed me when I needed protection most, its fallen branches disconnecting the neutral to my house and frying most of my electronics and appliances. Suspecting more than hurricane winds to be this tree's problem, I paid to have it cut down. Prayer and common sense proved right: water shot right up out of the middle of this tree as it was coming down. It was hollow.

Despite its impressive appearance, this tree wasn't strong at all. Somewhere, somehow, it had stopped growing inside, and it became a danger even to traffic on the street. Quite the misnomer, my "live" oak tree reminds me of hollow people who masquerade as Christians but who have nothing going on inside--no spiritual life, no growth to speak of year after year. They aren't even hypocrites, necessarily; nor are they especially awful people. They're just empty. Their pretty lives hide the void caused by failing to commune with God. I wouldn't want to have the testimony of my southern live oak tree--all pretense and no reality.

The Rotten Tree

This tree is typically quite tricky, too. It reminds me of Washington Irving's Gothic tale set in Colonial Massachusetts near the site of the Salem Witch Trials. "The Devil and Tom Walker" is a satire written in the tradition of American Romanticism, but Irving captures a darkly intriguing truth: the haunted forest, complete with quagmires, rotting skulls, croaking crows, and fallen trees, reveals big-name "Christians" who have carved their names on huge trees after making secret deals with the devil. The devil, a swarthy, partially clothed man covered in soot and carrying an ax rather than a pitchfork, records these upstanding citizens' spiritual regress by cutting a notch in their tree every time they sin--until the last fatal sin fells the tree. Then the devil stokes the fires of hell with the wood. Chief among Irving's--or, shall we say, the devil's--hypocrites are slave traders. This was always one of my favorite stories to teach because of the truth it conveyed.

Unfortunately, this past summer my enormous southern red oak tree--measured by Bartlett Tree Experts as one of the largest in the entire state of Tennessee--decided to show its true colors: it was dying of heart rot. Not only was this tree one of the biggest southern red oaks in the state, it was beloved in the community--so I found out afterwards--to the point that an overzealous, tree-hugging neighbor, herself boasting an otherwise professional persona, told me that what I was doing was evil. And what was that? I had decided to have this dangerous tree cut down.

I can't exactly say I was surprised when my tree's fatal illness came to light--despite my arborist's verdict of health the summer before--because, from the moment I stepped foot on this property, I discerned that something was "off." Despite its 200-foot circumference of apparently vibrant canopy reaching a soaring height of nearly 90 feet, this tree never showed the root flare that such an enormous tree should have, and it always left dead twigs and chunks of crumbling bark all over the yard. On the Monday before Hurricane Helene, when my tree dropped an enormous, tree-sized limb weighing between 4000 and 6000 pounds, the only explanation my arborist could offer was the phenomenon known as "sudden limb fall." He said it was not uncommon--but that only meant the same thing could happen again. It had already happened with a smaller limb that July, which was what prompted me to call the arborist in the first place to have the tree trimmed. Then when a 300-pound limb fell this past June on a sunny, still day, I knew something was very wrong.

The man who removed this fallen limb showed me the secret: it was hollowing out from fungal disease that would eventually claim the whole tree. He showed me where the encircling vine had damaged sizable portions of the trunk, making the tree vulnerable to insects. He pointed out that the tree was already starting to lean to the east. Then he and the tree expert with him spotted the hollow in the fork where that enormous limb had broken off last fall. By the time they both showed me the spongy base, after explaining that my tree's weight of easily 30,000 pounds would multiply as it fell, I patted my tree "goodbye," saying quietly, "This tree has got to come down."

This tree had the greatest reputation possible and was also believed to be a "witness tree" of Civil War times. I can see why an uninformed bystander would think I had lost my mind, but three times a near miss had spared us. The advancement of heart rot is truly sinister. Fungus invades the tree through an old wound possibly caused by poor pruning and eats away the dead heartwood that gives limbs their strength, while the sapwood and cambium layers appear as green and healthy as ever. But, healthy or not, the tree has lost its structural integrity and cannot withstand even the temperature changes on a calm summer day.

This tree reminds me of some people--beautiful on the outside but rotting on the inside. Their fall may seem to come out of nowhere, but the corruption has been going on unseen for a long, long time. Psalm 37 warns of the wicked man whose life spreads out like a green bay tree and then, suddenly, he "is not." His fall takes everyone down with him--family, friends, church people, his own organization, his online community. Sadly, this sounds like the news we hear every day. It amazes me that what is true of a tree is also true of the heart, for the fall of man brought with it the fall of nature and a curse that will not be lifted until Jesus comes.

The Mighty Tree

Of all the places I have ever lived, there is one tree that still chokes me up to this day--the white oak tree on the property where I lived for twelve and a half years in High Point, North Carolina. This tree towered nearly one hundred feet over my house, standing a little over one car-length away from the back bedroom windows. Quietly, it had stood year after year, decade after decade. In fact, Bartlett Tree Experts thought this tree's germinating acorn became a seedling during the Civil War. Who has not learned as a child that sweetly singsong poem by Joyce Kilmer, "I think that I shall never see a poem as lovely as a tree"? I think I remember drawing such a tree for this poem in elementary school. Then, one day, I met this tree in person. It whispered to me on calm, balmy days. It roared during thunderstorms and swayed thrillingly against the lightning.

Then it happened. One Sunday afternoon during an especially violent storm, my tree was struck by lightning. I wasn't home at the time. In fact, I hadn't been living there for several days as I stayed with my Parkinson's-ridden father, while my mother struggled for her life following her epic aortic valve replacement surgery a few weeks before. That Sunday was my parents' sixty-second wedding anniversary (twelve years ago this very day, September 1, 2013), which they would have to celebrate at High Point Regional Hospital. The events that had led up to this special day had been dire indeed, making its arrival that much more precious. Even though my mother's surgery had gone exceptionally well, the hospital had released her far too soon--in a mere five days--sending her back into A-fib and back to the hospital, where life-threatening allergic reactions to her medication sent her into three cardiac arrests in one week. The first happened right in front of me, and the other two were full code, occurring less than an hour apart, with my mother being down at least fifteen minutes both times.

She was in CCU in extremely critical condition, with a fist-sized hematoma on her liver caused by the ribs broken during the CPR to revive her--CPR, no less, over her merely days-old incision. The doctor explained that this hematoma was like a ripe tomato without the skin and could rupture at any time. When that happened, my mother would bleed to death and there would be nothing they could do. This trauma had sent my father's heart into irregular rhythm, and he had been admitted to the hospital that same night. The day after my mother's second and third cardiac arrest, as my sister and I stood with red-rimmed eyes glued to her swollen face, the nurses gave us hope, whether they intended to or not. Nurse Amy in her tall, tan, athletic build said in amazement that my mother had already endured trauma that would have taken down an eighteen-year-old.

She marveled, "Your mother did every command I asked of her. She wiggled her toes, she gripped my fingers, her eyes tracked my movements. Her mind is as sharp as ever. She is one strong lady." This news shot a thrill through me that I could not begin to describe. I had naturally been afraid that, even if my mother did survive, her mind would be gone, such that she would be only a shattered fragment of her vibrant, brilliant self. With the ventilator tube bulging down her airway, my mother could not communicate with us, but I knew from this wonderful news that she was definitely still in there. As my sister and I turned and looked at each other with sudden hope almost too afraid to hope, I announced, "We're not giving up until God says 'no.'"

My sister had three toddlers and her husband to care for, but I got permission to spend the night in CCU, where I had the privilege of listening to the rhythmic and raspy thumping of my mother's ventilator all night long. I never did arrive at anything resembling a comfortable position in the stiff leathery blue recliner, but I hadn't intended to sleep anyway. The thrill of my mother's still-living presence was too great, and the even greater thrill of my Heavenly Father's Presence comforted me throughout the night with joy unspeakable, as my spirit joined the church members who had agreed to fill slots in absentia for an all-night prayer vigil. The next morning, my mother was not only still alive, she smiled and waved cheerily at our pastor who had come to call. In body, mind, and spirit, she was one strong lady indeed.

The Sunday following this miraculous milestone-victory was the day of my parents' anniversary. My devoted father had never ceased to pray for my mother and sat by her side day after day in the seat of his walker until he fell asleep. Smitten with my mother's virtuous graces from the time he was seventeen years old, he was not about to let go now. That Sunday afternoon, even though it was storming wildly, I was determined to take him up to the hospital to see my mother, and she was alert enough to know that he was there. We were just getting ready to leave the house when my phone rang. It was my widowed neighbor, a usually self-possessed, controlling man who offered unsolicited advice quite freely. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," he kept saying. My heart began to pound when he said my tree had been struck by lightning. "I had to call the fire department." He said the lightning had followed the gas line, causing a ball of fire at the shut-off valve on the house. I pictured my cozy home in blazes, exploding like the bark off my wonderful tree.

"My house is on fire!" I announced stoically to my father, as we rushed ourselves into the car. I'm so thankful for Job and for the witness he left us. The whole time I drove in grim haste across town, I kept lifting my heart in surrender for whatever I would find. Somehow, I knew the Lord was still in control, and I didn't ask that toxic question, "Why?" When I reached Prescott Place, there were so many firetrucks, rescue vehicles, and police cars lining the street that I could not even get to my house. I ran down the street in the pouring rain with my key in hand to unlock the gate so that the firemen could reach my backyard. When all those dripping yellow slickers and rubber boots traipsed through my quiet house, not a particle was out of place. Stunned, one fireman said, "I can't believe the lightning didn't follow your gas line and blow your floors out." But I could believe it. I knew that the same Lord who had prevented my mother from dying an otherwise inevitable death had also laid His merciful Hand on my otherwise vulnerable house.

My father and I reached the hospital with no further adieu, and my parents celebrated not only their sixty-second wedding anniversary but three more before the Lord took my mother Home a little over three years later. The eight months that followed my mother's surgery found her in one medical facility after another as she continued to struggle for her survival. One of her best doctors--the father of one of my students--said her saga would rival Tolstoy's War and Peace for episodes. I stayed with my father during those eight months, keeping my fulltime teaching schedule, and I stayed another ten months following my mother's final return home that March. During all that time, I regularly stopped at my house on my way home from school to pick up mail, flush toilets, open faucets, wash loads of laundry, and pray for my tree. I kept a sharp eye out for any sign of change, but none ever came. Not even the first dead branch drooped or dropped after that lightning strike so many months before. Only a zipper-like scar all the way down the east side of the tree testified to my tree's traumatic assault.

When I finally came home to stay, sixteen months after that suspenseful September day, I settled back into my old routines, but with a deep sense of detachment. My heart spilled over in worship at the sink, the stove, the table, searching for words adequate to thank my Lord for all He had done. Then one day, my widowed neighbor called again in one of his drunken swaggers, threatening to sue me if I did not have my oak tree cut down. I thought this was odd indeed. Yes, it did border the fence beside his property, but, no, it wasn't, as he said, "a liability." Only in his imagination and paranoia did it pose any danger at all. It was now late winter--not quite spring--of 2015. Every tree in the neighborhood looked dead in late February. Why not give it one more spring to see if it budded as sweetly as it had for the past one hundred and fifty years?

It did. And early that summer, I called Bartlett Tree Experts as a gesture of good will and, really, so that I could quote their professional opinion as leverage against my neighbor's bullying. He had actually threatened that, if I did not have my tree cut down, he would come over and cut it down himself. "Set one foot on my property, and I will have you arrested for trespassing," I promised sternly. The young arborist who examined my tree said all it needed was insecticide and fertilizer to protect it from disease and insects. He pointed out the full canopy with no dead limbs and said that the tree would have died by now if it was going to. That was what I had thought, too.

He pointed out the full root flare with its big gnarly humps like something out of The Hobbit, and he pronounced the tight, firm bark free from damage, except where the one-hundred-foot lightning scar ran from the top of the tree as it touched the sky all the way down to the base. But he showed me where the bark had already begun to close over the wound. Then he walked back at a distance and just stood looking up at my tree in awe. Shaking his head emphatically, he turned towards me with a rebellious grin, commanding, "Don't you dare allow your neighbor to talk you into cutting down that tree. It has healed itself, and it will stand for another hundred years if you take care of it. They call them 'the mighty oak' for a reason."

I have never forgotten that lesson--or its emblematic resemblance to my wonderful mother. Our Creator likens the righteous life to a tree planted by the rivers of water whose leaf shall not wither and who will bear its fruit in its season. Whatsoever it does, He says, shall prosper. And what accounts for this mighty tree's invincibility? It is rooted near the living water in the rich soil of God's Word, on which it meditates both day and night. You and I can be this tree. In fact, we have to be this tree if we want to survive, for the reckoning storms are coming with greater intensity than we could have believed. So, here we have the testimony of four trees--the dead tree, the hollow tree, the rotten tree, and the mighty tree. Which tree, dear friend, are you?