Do you remember much about your childhood home? Maybe you recall the cupboard your sister used for a hiding spot, or the window over your bed, or the smell of the flowers in your mother’s garden. Every home seems to have its memorable features – the things which make it unique and beloved. For one of us the most wonderfully magical feature of home was a gigantic tree in the backyard. The leafy monster shaded the entire back corner of the yard and served as headquarters for all the children in the neighborhood. It supported a homemade fort in its branches where numerous exciting ventures were instigated. And dangling from its strongest branch was a long rope that served as both the means to climb into the fort and as a very fine swing.
But one summer the unthinkable occurred. A tree specialist was called to consult upon our tree, which was developing a dangerous looking fissure from top to bottom. A dismal prognosis was pronounced: the center of our childhood universe had to be cut down.
First the strong limbs were shorn off. Then with ropes, wedges and axes, the mighty trunk was severed and fell, shaking the yard all the way to the street, where the gang of saddened children had gathered to watch the event. When the tree service finished carrying off the remains of our tree, our yard looked barren. All that was left of our neighborhood headquarters was a very large stump.
For the next several days we kids met in yard as usual, at a loss for how to entertain ourselves. We eventually organized baseball games in the yard, using the old stump as home plate. Granted, runners had to negotiate a little carefully around the stump on a frantic dash to tag home plate, but that added an interesting degree of difficulty to the game. We were back in business.
Maybe you haven’t had a memorable experience with tree stumps you’ve dodged. But we would bet virtually everyone has had an experience dodging stumps of the emotional or spiritual variety. These stumps are what remain when something we have known and dearly loved has been felled and taken away. Sometimes a serious illness brings this kind of life diminishment. Sometimes a lost relationship, a lost job, or a financial reversal is the culprit. One minute life seems so good, so predictable, so familiar, and the next minute it all comes tumbling down, leaving nothing but a stump as the reminder of something great and glorious that had once been. Life has to be rethought.
But stumps, whether physical, emotional or spiritual, have one amazing characteristic, as anyone who has worked with stumps will tell you. They have deep roots, and they don’t give up easily. The roots send up shoots over and over again, attempting to claw their way back to a new future.
Maybe that is why the Prophet Isaiah chose to use the imagery of a stump to assure his people, when they had suffered an almost unendurable loss, that the future was not as bleak as it might appear. Millennia ago, he wrote these words of comfort: “A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots. The spirit of the LORD shall rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding.”
You see, Isaiah’s people had been cut down in their prime. But he knew there was life yet in the stump that was left. He foresaw a future, by God’s blessing, in which new life would spring from its roots and a new beginning would come. In fact, wisdom and understanding would mark the new growth. Righteousness and faithfulness would flourish.
We think the words of the prophet Isaiah are timeless. No matter what stumps you are dodging, no matter what has been cut down and carted off from your life, wait for those tender new shoots to spring up. Wait for wisdom and understanding. Wait for righteousness and faithfulness. Such tenacious life forces are not easily extinguished. They will arise anew when you least expect them.
By the way, a few years ago, we drove by the old childhood house, and guess what we discovered. Right there in the backyard, shooting up from the old stump, is a beautiful, flourishing, tall new tree. Is anything springing to new life in your neighborhood?
