A local parable - Tues 27 March 07

A couple of years ago I became so fed up with the daily commute to Birmingham that I found a job that was so close to home that I could walk or cycle there. Better still was the fact that most of the journey was through a park! The council had recently spent quite a lot of money (yours and mine) on improving the amenity by putting in a footpath with lighting, and by planting trees along the whole length of the path – a considerable distance! It looked fantastic, especially in the early summer months when the lush grass had been mowed and the leaves on the young trees were bright and tender. One could imagine how good it would look in 10-15 years time when the trees had grown and matured. Yet despite the promise the park was vulnerable. It was, after all, a public amenity and couldn’t be policed round the clock.

It wasn’t long before the first tree got damaged. Kids with knives butchered off its young branches, leaving a sad stump. Then another one got the treatment. Then another. Then another. It was like an epidemic. And when no-one was around. Eventually the carnage stopped. I’m not a tree freak. I don’t go around hugging trees. Yet I can remember being outraged at this vandalism. I did feel that something had been taken from me. Every day when I cycled past the stumps I still felt so angry and used to tell God how I felt. Why didn’t the council just dig them up and replant?

The dead months of winter passed, spring arrived, the buds on the surviving trees began to swell and burst, but the dead ones were still dead. There’s no life in a stump, is there? Of course not! Yet I saw something amazing: at ground level there were new shoots bursting up out of the roots. A miracle! Life coming out of death!

Every parable has many aspects and I’m sure you’ll find many that relate to the Easter story. Something I do want to pull out of this story is the fact that many of us, at some stage or other, will hit a barren point / have a Job experience: a time when there doesn’t seem to be anything going for us. Yet spring will come and with it comes new life!

Reading:
A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse;
From his roots a Branch will bear fruit. Is 1 :1

A bruised reed He will not break,
A smouldering wick He will not snuff out. Is 42:3