The Big Tree and the Sabbath

Hosea 14:6

The Voice (VOICE)

⁶     She’ll send out shoots until her beauty is like the olive tree and her fragrance like the cedars of Lebanon.

Down the dirt road that ran in front of our house stood a magnificent lone pine tree. We always referred to it as the Big Tree. Its trunk was almost big enough to carve a tunnel for the road to go through. The branches spread out in every direction from a point about ten feet (3m) off the ground. Some reached more than 30 feet (10m) high. Others spread horizontally and every other angle to about the same length. The tree had hundreds of large round cones that were filled with hard-shelled nuts.

[1]

When we were kids there was hardly a day when we didn’t run, walk, or ride our bikes down to the Big Tree. Initially it took us a fair amount of exploration, trial, and error to find out how to get up the first ten feet to where the great limbs branched out in all directions. But after several days of rediscovering the route to the branching, we could run up it in a flash, our bare feet gripping the rough bark to support us.

From the level of branching we had no trouble climbing to the farthest points on almost all the branches. We quickly learned that we had to beware of the branches when they became too thin to support our weight. For years we spent several hours a day climbing the various branches and traversing from one branch to another. There was an endless number of ways to get around the tree.

The branches became too thin to reach most of the cones directly, but the nuts they contained were too delicious not to try. Besides climbing we would stand on the ground and throw branches or stones at the cones. When we succeeded in knocking a cone down, we would gather around and break the cone open and pull out the nuts. Then we would each find a couple of rocks, place a nut on the bigger one, and hit it with the smaller one to break it open and feast on the nuts. Often we would hit the nut too hard, and it would either shoot off and get lost in the grass or be crushed into tiny fragments. At other times we would hit a supporting finger and get up and jump around and around, holding the injured finger and crying out in pain. Of course, many nuts were just hollow shells especially if the cones were rather old.

Mom taught us not to eat in between meals. The prohibition came with strong religious backing. However, she seemed to turn a blind eye when we ate the pine nuts we had worked so hard to obtain. Our parents also had very strict ideas about what activities were allowed on Sabbath and which weren’t. For some reason that I never understood, climbing trees was forbidden. We could take Sabbath hikes up the mountains and scale the naked cliffs and rocks, but climbing trees was taboo.

One day a missionary family from the Congo visited us. Their two kids, Tom and Lucy, were just our ages. We felt we had to show them our greatest treasure, the Big Tree. Of course, once we were at the tree, we couldn’t resist climbing and showing off our skills even though it was the Sabbath. I climbed way out on a branch that ran parallel to the ground and crossed the dirt road. As usual, when I got to the end of this branch, I took a good hold on the branch with both hands and flung myself off the end. The usual result was that I would hang there briefly, suspended above the earth, and then drop the few feet to the ground. This time the little branch I was holding onto snapped off, and my right hand hit the ground first trying to break my fall. It worked, but it also broke my arm and hurt worse than I could ever remember hurting before.

On the way to hospital Dad, who usually said very little, asked pensively, “Do you think this happened because it was Sabbath?” Mom, who usually expounded at length when I did something wrong, was silent. I did have four weeks to be constantly reminded of my indiscretion by a hot and itchy plaster cast.

Lord, sometimes You ask us to do or not do something, and we don’t understand why. Then You watch us pensively as we disregard Your request and reap the results that You were trying to shield us from. Thank You for Your forbearance, forgiveness, and rescue.

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[1] This is not the Big Tree, but the Big Tree was shaped something like this one. This tree grows near our home.