I walked out my door a moment ago and stepped into a snowstorm. No—not an actual snowstorm, but the white petals did fill the air. Wind and rain are hurrying the demise of the spectacular festival of pear blossoms.
I strolled over to the ancient pear tree, towering more than 40 feet above me. It is still rife with ivory blossoms, but most of them will come to nothing. No pears, no edible fruit.
It’s not only the wind that will bring spring’s promise to naught.
The tree has outgrown the graft that made it productive in its early years. When I crane my neck to look toward the sky, its beauty is still evident, its size truly awesome, but the branches are barren of the sweet fruit it once offered to those of us on the ground below.
Lovely, but lacking.
Strange. There is a section, growing near the ground, where the blossoms look completely different. Different shape. Different hues.
The trunk is misshapen and gnarled, and the branches are slender here.
But, I know from experience that these blossoms will become buds which, in turn, will produce fruit.
Edible pears near the ground.
Reaching for the sky where it may be seen and admired by all who pass by, the huge branches spread, barren of anything but beauty.
Near the ground, where no one sees and none would remark, fruit comes.
I’d like to be grounded. And useful.
Beauty—true beauty—comes from obedient and humble performance. Gnarled and scarred, we serve.
I remember it like it was yesterday. He sat, a long-haired rebel-without-a-clue, beside the calm and picturesque creek, waiting. Waiting for what? He had no idea. But, it was as nice a place to wait as he could think of.
The ancient stone table the skinny young man sat upon wasn’t all that comfortable, but the water flowing through the creek was quiet and calming. And what nineteen-year-old, eight hundred miles from home, doesn’t need to have his spirit calmed?
I love the water. I think I always have, my propensity for accidents in water notwithstanding. I’ve never really been afraid of water at all.
On that day, my waiting would be rewarded by being able to walk a passing acquaintance, a lovely red-headed young lady, to her door at the other end of town. I’ve walked with her many more miles since that day.
But that’s a rabbit trail for another day. Today, I’m thinking about the water.
Quiet and rippling, the kind of stream you want to skip stones across or float on in a canoe, trailing your fingers in the cool wetness. Perhaps, one could even toss a baited hook into one of the deeper pools along the edge, awaiting a tug from a curious bream or bluegill.
We love water. When it’s behaving, we love it.
Last fall, I stood on an old concrete bridge, not fifty feet from where the unwitting young man awaited his future love all those years ago, and I took the photo you see above.
You see why I love the water, don’t you?
But tonight I’m rethinking my admiration, my lifelong delight with water. I’m not so sure anymore.
Why the change of heart?
See for yourself.
image by Paul Phillips
I stood this morning on that same concrete bridge and snapped the picture. It wasn’t calm. I wasn’t calm. I was disoriented—discombobulated—as the Lovely Lady’s father would have described it.
The furious flow, rising nearly two feet over the little stone dam, tumbled and roiled down below me, riotously overflowing its normal channel. The sheer motion of the water was terrifying, the volume that passed under the little bridge I stood upon causing it to shake and vibrate.
I’m not sure anyone who fell into that flow would have escaped alive. From where I stood, it was only a couple hundred feet to where the water was forced under a single-lane bridge, continuing on beside the park, moving still faster as the rocky bottom of the creek dropped down again and again.
I didn’t dally on the bridge.
How does that happen? How is it that something I’ve loved for all of my life, something so placid and lovely, turned into a hideous nightmare, ready to consume everything in its path?
There are other things that seem to do that, aren’t there? Families, marriages, friendships we’ve been part of—relationships so calm and loving, so fulfilling. And yet, in the blink of an eye, they can seem to be monstrous, poised to consume all that has been good.
There are so many more situations and things we treasure that turn ugly and terrifying in such a short time. Our work. Our neighborhoods. Our churches.
For years we float in the gentle current, row-row-rowing our boat gently down the stream, and suddenly we’re screaming at our God to wake up and save us before we die.
He will, you know. Save us.
It doesn’t always work in the same way He did it back then. Sometimes, instead of saying, “Peace, be still,” to the waves, he asks us why we’re so afraid of the storm.
And sometimes, He just asks us to trust Him as our stumbling feet carry us on through the roiling water.
I believe He’ll bring us through. The apostle (who my parents thought it would be nice to name me after) suggested that these are only temporary troubles. (2 Corinthians 4:17)
It doesn’t seem like they’re all that temporary. But when we look back at them we’ll laugh at how they terrified us so.
Troubles aren’t eternal. They’re not immortal.
We are.
By afternoon today, the waters in our little creek were already receding, the frightening currents slowing to a noisy gurgle. As if nothing was ever amiss, the stream flows on down to the river it is tributary to, making its quiet way eventually to the Gulf of Mexico, hundreds of miles to our south.
I think I may go stand on that little bridge again tomorrow.
I love the water.
Don’t you?
When you go through deep waters, I will be with you. When you go through rivers of difficulty, you will not drown. When you walk through the fire of oppression, you will not be burned up; the flames will not consume you. (Isaiah 43:2, NLT)
Nothing is permanent in this wicked world, not even our troubles. (Charlie Chaplin)
The trunk is misshapen and gnarled, and the branches are slender here.
