My Daddy and the Tree

While looking through some “vintage prints” in a Print Shop Photo Folio CD I have, I came across the above picture. What a huge tree!

It reminded me of a story my Daddy told me a few years ago. One I don’t remember him telling to me when I was a youngster.The incident happened when he was just a young boy. The year was around 1920. Daddy would have been about nine years old. He said during that time there was a stave mill operating in the area. (I had to ask him what “staves” were! Remember seeing old barrels or buckets made of strips of wood held together with bands of metal? The strips of wood are called “staves”) People in the area sold their white oak logs to this mill, the mill made staves out of the logs and then sold the staves to a barrel factory.

Daddy said that sometime during the early 1920’s there was a very unusual white oak tree cut down on some property adjoining his daddy’s farm. When this tree was cut down, the stump that it left was large enough for twenty-one men to stand on. Imagine that! All the logging back then was done by hand and with horses and mules. It must have taken some muscle and stamina to get that tree cut down and then cut up into logs and loaded on a wagon to take to the stave mill. Only one log that size could be loaded onto a wagon at one time. Those were the good ole days when people knew what it was like to work hard and for long hours to make a living for their family. ( II Chronicles 15: 7 Be ye strong therefore, and let not your hands be weak: for your work shall be rewarded. )

After Daddy told me about this unusual tree, I started thinking about another tree. The year was around 33 A.D. The place was a hillside called Calvary. This tree was a cross. On this cross hung the Saviour of the world. ( Acts 5: 30 The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom ye slew and hanged on a tree. ) On this tree hung the weight of not just twenty-one men but the weight of the sins of the whole world. ( I Peter 2: 24 Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed. )

My Daddy has been in heaven for almost a year and a half now. I think one of the things I admired most about him was that as a young man he looked on this tree...the cross of Calvary....and accepted the free gift of salvation provided there by the Lord Jesus Christ. (Exodus 15: 25 And he cried unto the LORD; and the LORD shewed him a tree… )

When we truly cry out to the Lord for mercy, He ALWAYS shows us a tree…the cross of Calvary. My prayer for you today is that you have taken a good look at Calvary where Jesus paid for our sins on the old rugged tree. (Jesus says in John 12: 32 And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me.)

Marilyn