Shade Tree Wisdom 4/26/08

I noticed while going to Senior Class Thursday there was a small hole in the pavement. Not large, just an inch or so. The sort that gets left when a larger stone in the mix lands near the top and works loose, so leaving a bit of a hole, maybe an inch or so wide and less than that deep. And dirt eventually settles in. Thursday I noticed a blade of grass coming up. A seed had blown in and started to grow. It wouldn’t be there long, of course, either pulled by someone, or destroyed by a car running over, or something. But why was it there for me to see just now?

Well, the Lord who says His are “The cattle on a thousand hills”, and who is the eternal God. Who created and said, “Let there be” and there was. He is saying to this pilgrim, “Remember that I am God”. What I promise, I will do. And I have promised that “I will be with you to the ends of the earth”. He who clothes the lilies of the field will take care of my every need.

It reminded me of Longfellow’s poem, “The Psalm of life”.
The final verses;

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;

Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.

-- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow(1807-1882).

The Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone, so let us make an helpmeet for him”. And so He created Eve as a companion. We are really social creatures, here to serve one another. Maybe that blade is there to remind this pilgrim of that part of life. A warm smile, a ready hand, an eagerness to serve, these things often are sort of lost today in our hurry to get ahead. And that blade reminds us all that we reach farther and achieve more because we do stand on the shoulders of others. On the southwest corner of the intersection of Grogans Mill and Research Forest in the Woodlands is an art piece that tells this story.

One blade of grass brings many thoughts. I just hope the message for us is clear. We are there for others too. So the question always must be, Am I?

GPD 4/26/08