Worldview of hope
This tree is on Ruby Beach about as far north and west as you can get on the lower 48 states of the United States.
It’s clinging to the sides of continually eroding embankments, while wind, water and time conspire to break its will. It has come to be known by locals and tourists alike as the Tree Of Life.
On the day this picture was taken, it was 40 degrees and very windy. It was Monday afternoon. It is very remote. Yet, we were not the only ones lining up to take our picture under this tree’s desperate, and therefore, somehow inspiring and hope-producing roots.
This makes sense to me. Because, in many ways we understand intuitively, how our lives look very much like this tree’s:
- Clinging to the past – reaching toward the future
- Stuck in failure – striving toward success
- Filled with regret – continuing courageously
- Feeling inadequate – taking the risk anyway
- “I didn’t have a dad” – “But i’m still trying to be a good one”
- “I know I made that mistake” – “But I want better for you”
There is a natural spring bubbling out of the rocks under and behind the tree. The spring is simultaneously responsible for the tree’s life and death. While the water is essential to the tree’s survival, the erosion the water causes will inexorably kill it.
Yet, there it remains! Being nourished and poisoned in its plot. Clinging to life. Even, iconically representing life itself. And, at the same time, dying. drooping ever so steadily towards its inevitable fate as a part of the beach’s driftwood graveyard.
I stood there looking at that tree feeling some kind of way…I think the feeling was, “I get it!” Life is hard. Maybe, you’re tempted to feel that I’m making too much of this tree. Maybe I am.
I could just put the picture away and forget about it, you might suggest. It’s just a tree after all. But I can’t walk past the mirror every day without noticing the deepening wrinkles on my face. Time is ticking on and there are forces at work in life that seem to serve a dual purpose; age brings both wisdom and wrinkles.
So, I have a choice to make, and so do you. Are we going to see the spring water in our lives as poison or nourishment? Are we going to see struggle as meaningless or frame survival as heroic? Are we going to focus on the erosion of time and swiftly approaching death or, celebrate life and endurance with gratitude and humility?
I choose the later. I read a study outlining the five major regrets of people on their death beds. It was put out by Hospice a few years back. The one that hit me hardest? “Failing to realize, sooner, that happiness is a choice.”
“…but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”
Cling to joy. Choose to see your bubbling spring as a blessing. Accept the harshness of struggle as a shaping force that increases your strength for endurance and ultimately hope. Take hold of the thing that calls you toward heaven. Grow in such a way as to become a wise old tree.
Thanks for reading.
johnallenbishop 