The Apple Tree

My grown up boy just dropped by to check up on our back yard makeover. I watched him as he picked up a gnarled trunk of a small tree that we’d just uprooted. It was just an old, almost 20 year old apple tree that was diseased, dwarfed and never really produced any good apples. That’s one way of putting it.
But . . . ( big sigh) a time where I’m reminded once more that there is a season for everything. I remember a day when he came home from school with a container in which he had planted, he told us, an apple tree. It was probably about second grade. The students had most likely learned about planting seeds and trees growing from seeds, so he had taken the seeds from his lunch apple and planted them, full of hope and big expectations. He didn’t know that in reality nothing would be happening. To his delight and our surprise, one day something green came up and sure enough it grew. Eventually we planted it in the back yard. It grew slowly, but it was an apple tree nonetheless, bearing its first fruit just a few years ago.
The tree was small, as were the apples, but the memory attached to it always gave me a special feeling. A reminder of a young boy full of hope and that miracles do happen, even against all odds. So, today in my heart, I lift a prayer of thanks to the God Who cared to bring delight to a child who has now grown into a man with big expectations of a big God.