Bible Center Church

God’s creation has always intrigued me. Gazing at the stars at night
as a child, I longed to travel to them. On this earth I have enjoyed it
all; sunsets and rainbows, the birds, dogs, cats, mice, rats,
creepy-crawlies and reptiles. At someplace along the line my interest
turned to the plant kingdom and settled on trees.

In the 1930s, before I started to school, I lived in Roane County. It
was there that I began to explore the wonders of the variety of trees
growing on our farm. From our orchard, I often picked green apples and
ate them behind the barn so Mom wouldn’t catch me. An American Chestnut
tree grew on a hill just outside my bedroom window. It was awesome:
fifty to sixty feet tall with branches spreading from a trunk I could
not reach around. Each morning the cockle-doodle-do of a rooster
wakened me from its perch on one of the branches. After the first frost
in the fall, the sound of chestnuts dropping onto the tin roof over my
bedroom was music to my young ears. I remember well the sweet taste of
chestnuts roasted in our open fireplace, even though it was more than
70 years ago.

Once I started school, and was required to memorize “The Village
Blacksmith,” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, I proudly told my friends,
“Hey! I sleep under a spreading chestnut tree!” My tree stood so
wondrously, lifting its branches to the heavens displaying the glory of
the One who made it. We learned Bible verses in school in those days,
and I knew that my tree fulfilled the Psalmist’s wish, “Let the field
be joyful, and all that is in it. Then all the trees of the woods will
rejoice before the Lord.”

You can imagine my sorrow as one by one, those trees disappeared from
our farm. In too short a time, all that remained of the majestic
chestnut were split rail fences that still meander across the eastern
part of our country. A pathological invader, a deadly fungus from Asia,
wiped out one-fourth of our forest trees.

This magnificent tree was not completely destroyed, though; new
sprouts sprang from the roots of dead trees. Research groups grafted
the fragile shoots onto other varieties of nut trees and they have
grown, producing fruit, and blight resistant seedlings are now bearing
fruit. As a result, this magnificent tree has been returned to certain
areas of our eastern forests, and once again I have savored the taste
of roasted American Chestnuts. It became obvious to me even as a child
that many attributes of the American Chestnut tree were also those of a
Christian: fruitful, lovely, stable, and persevering.

Job 14:7, speaking of the hope of restoration in his own life, said,
"For there is hope for a tree, if it is cut down, that it will sprout
again, and that its tender shoots will not cease.” The truth of that
passage can be applied to our own lives as well. When we are “cut down”
by circumstances in our own life, there is hope.

In Rev. 22:16, Jesus says that He is the Root, the Offspring of
David, the Bright and Morning Star. If our Lord is the Root, then we
are His branches. And the Apostle Paul adds, in Romans 11:18, “...
remember that you do not support the Root, but the Root supports you.”

Like the once mighty American Chestnut tree, when we lose all hope,
our Lord is able raise us up again. We have only to trust Him to do it.