The Tree
Stories
Object:
Contents
"The Tree" by Keith Hewitt
"Think Like a Bee" by Frank Ramirez
* * * * * * *
The Tree
by Keith Hewitt
Isaiah 11:1-10
The stump, if it could have spoken, would have boasted of great things -- the tree that had towered above it for a century or more had been felled in service to a mighty kingdom. The branches had been stripped away, and the massive trunk had been planed and shaved, finished to a manmade perfection that rivaled the God-made perfection in which it had stood for so long... and when it was just so, it became a beam that supported the roof of the Great Temple in Jerusalem -- Herod's gift to the people he ruled and to his own posterity.
But the stump could not speak... so, instead, it rested over the years, began to crack and wither beneath the seasons, until something new -- something marvelous -- happened. Just how it happened, could not be said, but somehow a seed from another cedar had fallen and become lodged deep inside a crack in the stump. One of the priests who occasionally came by on the way to Jerusalem -- for it was not far away -- might have said it was an act of God; one of the Roman soldiers who also passed by -- for there was a permanent camp not far away -- would have said it was a matter of luck.
Who's to say?
But through the march of seasons, the seed was nourished and cradled, until at last it began to grow -- thrusting up a single shoot, at first, thirsting for the light and warmth of the Judean sun. By the hand of God, through the flexing of cells, it sought out the sunlight, deployed green leaves to collect the sun, and convert its radiance to something more practical that could be used to fuel life and growth.
And it was successful in its quest... so successful that over the next few years its slender shoot began to thicken and take on a form that was more closely akin to what it would one day be -- a tree. In miniature, yes, but in its infancy it modeled its maturity -- a slim trunk, fine branches that grew out from the trunk and sprouted leaves of their own. The water it needed was sporadic, but still dependable enough... and though it sometimes sunk quickly into the ground to avoid evaporation, it could not hide -- the roots this sapling sent down were deep and cast a wide net.
Blessed by strength and endurance, it continued to grow. It reached for the sky, spreading its canopy of leaves out a little further every year, gathering power for the growing season. The trunk -- for it was now a real tree trunk -- hardened and thickened, splitting the stump from which it grew. Eventually, with almost microscopic progress, it began to devour the stump, itself, surrounding the dried remains with layers of bark so that one day it was no longer even possible to tell where the great stump ended and the new tree began -- although the differences were still there, beneath the outer bark.
One wonders, if it had known -- and could a tree know? -- that it would not live the century or more that its ancestor had lived, if it would have put forth the effort. If it had known that it was the last of its kind -- the only tree worthy of the name -- still standing in this little parcel of Judea, would it have struggled so to grow?
A priest would say that if it was God's will for it to grow, it would grow... a Roman would just shrug and relieve himself on the tree, not knowing or caring about its ultimate fate or reason for being.
It could not count, though it kept a careful record of the years within its skin, tallied by alternating light and dark rings. The man who found it was not interested in counting rings, however, and instead just counted himself lucky to have found it. Was it luck, or fate -- or something even grander? He was a simple man and for the most part did not concern himself with such questions -- even though he had had more cause than most to wonder of late.
No matter... he found the tree, and with the tools he carried by habit, he began to go about the business of stripping away the lowest branches. If the tree could have thought about what was happening, it would have been aware, first, of the branches being tugged, bent back and forth, then finally cut as they were pulled from the trunk, leaving only little knobs that glistened with sap. The man, knowing he had no use for the rest of the tree, was respectful -- he did not take more than he needed, did not waste precious lumber that he could not use.
Instead, he took the branches that he had cut, stripped away the leaves and carried them back to a cave not far from the road that wound into Bethlehem. There, he would trim and shape the branches, weave and tie them together with sturdy knots of hide until they formed a crude but proper resting place -- a cradle to replace the rough stone manger in which his son had been laid the night before.
There would be a better one waiting for him, in Nazareth, where his father had carefully fashioned it... but until then, this would do. After all, he thought, it would not be long until they were home again. He did not yet know of the depths of Herod's madness or of the flight to Egypt.
He was just a simple man, doing what needed to be done to provide for his son, and he tried not to think what the future held or of who the child really was -- when he did, he was overwhelmed with feelings of inadequacy and awe. Instead, he looked at each day as it came and did what needed to be done. He never thought, again, of the tree by the side of the road that had provided the cradle his son needed, except occasionally to wonder at the good fortune of the tree being there when he needed it.
Had he known that in thirty years the trunk would be cut down and used to make the cross on which his son would die... would he have cut it down, himself, that night?
Who's to say?
Keith Hewitt is the author of three volumes of NaTiVity Dramas: Nontraditional Christmas Plays for All Ages (CSS). He is a local pastor, former youth leader and Sunday school teacher, and occasional speaker at Christian events. He is currently serving as the pastor at Parkview UMC in Turtle Lake, Wisconsin. Keith is married to a teacher, and they have two children and assorted dogs and cats.
Think Like a Bee
by Frank Ramirez
Matthew 3:1-12
Now John wore clothing of camel's hair with a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey.
-- Matthew 3:4
Honey was the most important sweetener in the ancient world, and is mentioned several times in the Bible, but for many centuries honey could only be harvested by killing the bees. This was certainly a wasteful way to garner what ought to have been a renewable resource. In some circumstances a colony of bees can produce hundreds of pounds of honey every year, but when the beekeeper killed his "stock" he had to start all over from scratch with a brand new hive.
Part of the problem lay in the fact that the workings of the bee colony were little understood. Indeed, many assumed that the one very large bee in the hive, which seemed to be the ruler, was the king. Only late in the history of humans and bees working together was it realized that she was a Queen and that all the workers were female!
In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries there were attempts to fashion reusable hives. The most popular was the design known as the skep, domes made of coiled straw or of wicker. Hives might be started in a glass ball so one could watch the bees at work. Some encouraged the bees to build in barrels, some in hollowed out logs. But none of these solutions allowed the beekeeper to remove the honey without killing the bees outright.
Another real problem with bee hives was that the bees tended to fill every available inch with combs or propolis, a glue manufactured by the bees to hold the hive together. It meant trying to remove the honeycomb often meant tearing everything apart.
In 1851, however, a minister from Philadelphia, Lorenzo Lorraine Langstroth (1810-1895) had a flash of inspiration and permanently solved the problem. He had purchased a few hives from a local beekeeper and began to experiment with the boxes that some beekeepers used to store hives and he realized that there was a natural "bee space," a gap that bees naturally chose when left to their own devices that amounted to about 3/8 of an inch between blocks of comb.
It was, for him Langstroth, literally a Eureka moment. As he would describe it himself in a book:
Pondering, as I had so often done before, how I could get rid of the disagreeable necessity of cutting the attachments of the combs from the walls of the hives... the almost self-evident idea of using the same bee space as in the shallow chambers came into my mind, and in a moment the suspended movable frames, kept at a suitable distance from each other and the case containing them, came into being. Seeing by intuition, as it were, the end from the beginning. I could scarcely refrain from shouting out my "Eureka!" in the open streets.
The idea was simple and easily described. Frames were suspended in boxes in a manner that insured that when the bees drew out the comb there would be 3/8 of an inch for them to still work in. The boxes could be stacked, one on top of the other, so as the bee colony grew more "supers" as they were known could be added. A little smoke and the bees would grow just docile enough to allow a skilled beekeeper to remove the frames packed with honeycomb without harming the hive, and empty frames replacing the ones taken away.
Langstroth patented the idea in 1852. Overnight everyone was using the Langstroth hives. They still are. The standard for the industry is built around his basic design and in the more than a century and a half since his invention there have been some refinements, but no basic changes.
Frank Ramirez has served as a pastor for nearly 30 years in Church of the Brethren congregations in Los Angeles, California; Elkhart, Indiana; and Everett, Pennsylvania. A graduate of LaVerne College and Bethany Theological Seminary, Ramirez is the author of numerous books, articles, and short stories. His CSS titles include Partners in Healing, He Took a Towel, The Bee Attitudes, three volumes of Lectionary Worship Aids, and Breakdown on Bethlehem Street.
*****************************************
StoryShare, December 8, 2013, issue.
Copyright 2013 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to the StoryShare service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons, in worship and classroom settings, in brief devotions, in radio spots, and as newsletter fillers. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 5450 N. Dixie Highway, Lima, Ohio 45807.
"The Tree" by Keith Hewitt
"Think Like a Bee" by Frank Ramirez
* * * * * * *
The Tree
by Keith Hewitt
Isaiah 11:1-10
The stump, if it could have spoken, would have boasted of great things -- the tree that had towered above it for a century or more had been felled in service to a mighty kingdom. The branches had been stripped away, and the massive trunk had been planed and shaved, finished to a manmade perfection that rivaled the God-made perfection in which it had stood for so long... and when it was just so, it became a beam that supported the roof of the Great Temple in Jerusalem -- Herod's gift to the people he ruled and to his own posterity.
But the stump could not speak... so, instead, it rested over the years, began to crack and wither beneath the seasons, until something new -- something marvelous -- happened. Just how it happened, could not be said, but somehow a seed from another cedar had fallen and become lodged deep inside a crack in the stump. One of the priests who occasionally came by on the way to Jerusalem -- for it was not far away -- might have said it was an act of God; one of the Roman soldiers who also passed by -- for there was a permanent camp not far away -- would have said it was a matter of luck.
Who's to say?
But through the march of seasons, the seed was nourished and cradled, until at last it began to grow -- thrusting up a single shoot, at first, thirsting for the light and warmth of the Judean sun. By the hand of God, through the flexing of cells, it sought out the sunlight, deployed green leaves to collect the sun, and convert its radiance to something more practical that could be used to fuel life and growth.
And it was successful in its quest... so successful that over the next few years its slender shoot began to thicken and take on a form that was more closely akin to what it would one day be -- a tree. In miniature, yes, but in its infancy it modeled its maturity -- a slim trunk, fine branches that grew out from the trunk and sprouted leaves of their own. The water it needed was sporadic, but still dependable enough... and though it sometimes sunk quickly into the ground to avoid evaporation, it could not hide -- the roots this sapling sent down were deep and cast a wide net.
Blessed by strength and endurance, it continued to grow. It reached for the sky, spreading its canopy of leaves out a little further every year, gathering power for the growing season. The trunk -- for it was now a real tree trunk -- hardened and thickened, splitting the stump from which it grew. Eventually, with almost microscopic progress, it began to devour the stump, itself, surrounding the dried remains with layers of bark so that one day it was no longer even possible to tell where the great stump ended and the new tree began -- although the differences were still there, beneath the outer bark.
One wonders, if it had known -- and could a tree know? -- that it would not live the century or more that its ancestor had lived, if it would have put forth the effort. If it had known that it was the last of its kind -- the only tree worthy of the name -- still standing in this little parcel of Judea, would it have struggled so to grow?
A priest would say that if it was God's will for it to grow, it would grow... a Roman would just shrug and relieve himself on the tree, not knowing or caring about its ultimate fate or reason for being.
It could not count, though it kept a careful record of the years within its skin, tallied by alternating light and dark rings. The man who found it was not interested in counting rings, however, and instead just counted himself lucky to have found it. Was it luck, or fate -- or something even grander? He was a simple man and for the most part did not concern himself with such questions -- even though he had had more cause than most to wonder of late.
No matter... he found the tree, and with the tools he carried by habit, he began to go about the business of stripping away the lowest branches. If the tree could have thought about what was happening, it would have been aware, first, of the branches being tugged, bent back and forth, then finally cut as they were pulled from the trunk, leaving only little knobs that glistened with sap. The man, knowing he had no use for the rest of the tree, was respectful -- he did not take more than he needed, did not waste precious lumber that he could not use.
Instead, he took the branches that he had cut, stripped away the leaves and carried them back to a cave not far from the road that wound into Bethlehem. There, he would trim and shape the branches, weave and tie them together with sturdy knots of hide until they formed a crude but proper resting place -- a cradle to replace the rough stone manger in which his son had been laid the night before.
There would be a better one waiting for him, in Nazareth, where his father had carefully fashioned it... but until then, this would do. After all, he thought, it would not be long until they were home again. He did not yet know of the depths of Herod's madness or of the flight to Egypt.
He was just a simple man, doing what needed to be done to provide for his son, and he tried not to think what the future held or of who the child really was -- when he did, he was overwhelmed with feelings of inadequacy and awe. Instead, he looked at each day as it came and did what needed to be done. He never thought, again, of the tree by the side of the road that had provided the cradle his son needed, except occasionally to wonder at the good fortune of the tree being there when he needed it.
Had he known that in thirty years the trunk would be cut down and used to make the cross on which his son would die... would he have cut it down, himself, that night?
Who's to say?
Keith Hewitt is the author of three volumes of NaTiVity Dramas: Nontraditional Christmas Plays for All Ages (CSS). He is a local pastor, former youth leader and Sunday school teacher, and occasional speaker at Christian events. He is currently serving as the pastor at Parkview UMC in Turtle Lake, Wisconsin. Keith is married to a teacher, and they have two children and assorted dogs and cats.
Think Like a Bee
by Frank Ramirez
Matthew 3:1-12
Now John wore clothing of camel's hair with a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey.
-- Matthew 3:4
Honey was the most important sweetener in the ancient world, and is mentioned several times in the Bible, but for many centuries honey could only be harvested by killing the bees. This was certainly a wasteful way to garner what ought to have been a renewable resource. In some circumstances a colony of bees can produce hundreds of pounds of honey every year, but when the beekeeper killed his "stock" he had to start all over from scratch with a brand new hive.
Part of the problem lay in the fact that the workings of the bee colony were little understood. Indeed, many assumed that the one very large bee in the hive, which seemed to be the ruler, was the king. Only late in the history of humans and bees working together was it realized that she was a Queen and that all the workers were female!
In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries there were attempts to fashion reusable hives. The most popular was the design known as the skep, domes made of coiled straw or of wicker. Hives might be started in a glass ball so one could watch the bees at work. Some encouraged the bees to build in barrels, some in hollowed out logs. But none of these solutions allowed the beekeeper to remove the honey without killing the bees outright.
Another real problem with bee hives was that the bees tended to fill every available inch with combs or propolis, a glue manufactured by the bees to hold the hive together. It meant trying to remove the honeycomb often meant tearing everything apart.
In 1851, however, a minister from Philadelphia, Lorenzo Lorraine Langstroth (1810-1895) had a flash of inspiration and permanently solved the problem. He had purchased a few hives from a local beekeeper and began to experiment with the boxes that some beekeepers used to store hives and he realized that there was a natural "bee space," a gap that bees naturally chose when left to their own devices that amounted to about 3/8 of an inch between blocks of comb.
It was, for him Langstroth, literally a Eureka moment. As he would describe it himself in a book:
Pondering, as I had so often done before, how I could get rid of the disagreeable necessity of cutting the attachments of the combs from the walls of the hives... the almost self-evident idea of using the same bee space as in the shallow chambers came into my mind, and in a moment the suspended movable frames, kept at a suitable distance from each other and the case containing them, came into being. Seeing by intuition, as it were, the end from the beginning. I could scarcely refrain from shouting out my "Eureka!" in the open streets.
The idea was simple and easily described. Frames were suspended in boxes in a manner that insured that when the bees drew out the comb there would be 3/8 of an inch for them to still work in. The boxes could be stacked, one on top of the other, so as the bee colony grew more "supers" as they were known could be added. A little smoke and the bees would grow just docile enough to allow a skilled beekeeper to remove the frames packed with honeycomb without harming the hive, and empty frames replacing the ones taken away.
Langstroth patented the idea in 1852. Overnight everyone was using the Langstroth hives. They still are. The standard for the industry is built around his basic design and in the more than a century and a half since his invention there have been some refinements, but no basic changes.
Frank Ramirez has served as a pastor for nearly 30 years in Church of the Brethren congregations in Los Angeles, California; Elkhart, Indiana; and Everett, Pennsylvania. A graduate of LaVerne College and Bethany Theological Seminary, Ramirez is the author of numerous books, articles, and short stories. His CSS titles include Partners in Healing, He Took a Towel, The Bee Attitudes, three volumes of Lectionary Worship Aids, and Breakdown on Bethlehem Street.
*****************************************
StoryShare, December 8, 2013, issue.
Copyright 2013 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to the StoryShare service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons, in worship and classroom settings, in brief devotions, in radio spots, and as newsletter fillers. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 5450 N. Dixie Highway, Lima, Ohio 45807.
