Growth Rings

Spring has finally managed to wrestle winter’s firm grip from the forest. The branches of the woods are now resonating with the songs of cardinals, the drumming of grouse, and the rapid tapping of woodpeckers. The mosquitoes remain in hiding. In addition to being a perfect time for exploring the woods, it is a great time to start up the chainsaw and cut up the fallen trees before the undergrowth makes them too hard to reach. So, just the other day I took my saw out of storage, checked to make sure it was operating properly, and headed outdoors.

As I walked out to the woods, I passed what remained of my once favorite tree. It is now only a stump about eighteen inches above the ground, but when it was alive, it was a very straight, very tall (70 to 80 foot) Poplar tree. In Colorado, they are called Aspens, sometimes Quaking Aspens. They have very small, light green leaves that move and appear to shimmer in the slightest breeze. In the fall, the leaves become yellowish gold. Standing in a grove of them is like being in the nave of a great cathedral with large expanses of colored glass. God is quite the artist. My favorite tree was very beautiful and symmetrical; it seemed to be one of the sturdiest trees in the forest. It was killed by one of the smallest creatures, the tent caterpillar. Once the tree became infested, it only lasted a week or two. I wasn’t up to taking down such a massive tree, so it stood dead for two years. To my benefit, a fortuitously placed woodpecker hole and a spring windstorm took down the top 40 feet or so. I felled the rest of the tree after I grew tired of looking at what resembled a really boring totem pole.

As I was cutting the main trunk into more manageable sizes for stacking and eventually splitting and burning, I noticed the annual growth rings in the wood. The rings were very pronounced. As is typical with all trees, some ring bands were tightly spaced indicating very little growth that year, and other bands were widely spaced indicating a lot of growth that year. All total, the number of rings indicated that the tree was about 43 years old.

As it turned out, my favorite tree was about as old as I was, and that got me thinking. How does God reveal, either to me or to someone else, the spiritual growth, if any, in a season of my own life? At first nothing easy came to mind, though the answer was right before my very eyes. Then I realized that I could not observe the growth rings until after I cut clear though the trunk of the tree. So it made perfect sense that it is usually under adverse, difficult, or unpleasant circumstances that the changes and spiritual growth in my life become apparent to me or to others. There’s an old saying that crisis builds character, but I’ve come to realize that crisis or difficult circumstances also reveal character, and more to the point, those events reveal the work and growth that God has accomplished in me.

When Abraham was tested, the growth in his life and the faith that God was building in him became evident in his obedience (Gen. 22). When David, the boy who would be king, confronted his enemies or ran for his life from them, God’s work in the young man was revealed (1 Samuel 17:32-50, 24, and numerous Psalms). When Daniel prayed to the Lord despite death threats, his true loyalty and desire for the Lord was tested and made known (Daniel 6). In a supernatural sense, their spiritual “growth rings” were exposed in those trying times. And then consider Jesus; He didn’t suddenly get character in the Garden of Gethsemane. The enormous pressure He was under revealed how much He had grown (Luke 2:52). His obedience, to willingly walk into the punishment we deserved, was a result of all of His years of connection to the Father.

God’s word tells us that those who meditate (drink in) on His law day and night are like trees planted along the riverbank; they produce fruit in all seasons (Psalms 1:3). Accordingly, just as the size of a tree’s growth rings and the fruitfulness of it are determined by how much rain and water the tree has taken in, our spiritual “growth rings” and fruitfulness are proportional to how connected we are to the Father, Son, and Spirit, and how much of Their nourishment we drink in. I’m glad God gave me that insight. I hope you are too.

Grace to you.

Dave Paukner