Nurturing New Life

The little tree stands as a soldier guarding the small inlet of water. It is unusual in that it will potentially have a short life span without help. Not much will assure it of success except the old tree below it.

The little cedar tree has been rooted in a very old stump that stands in the bay – protruding from the water. The old stump is all that is left standing of a fair sized tree that likely was growing there long before the water changed course and filled this bay. The stump is a testimony to the fact that a very old tree once lived here. This all happened many years ago with the further upgrading of this water Trent Severn Water way just north of the Peterborough area.

The old stump is now what they call a nursery tree. It has long lost its own luster but is now helping to develop and nurture a new life. I looked at this a long time and have meditated on what has been happening.

How it fits…
This week we were talking about our grandparents and when they came to the original farms and towns across Canada to try and build a new life for their families. Different folk shared stories about the way that their grandpas and grandmas gave everything they had to build the life for their family that would come after them. They would never know the ones that followed but everyone would know them.

The little tree reminds me of this powerful human drive to give life to something coming behind us. Kind of a powerful thought I have entertained this Father’s Day.

The question is then – how do I live with this powerful thought in mind? Someone will benefit from my struggles as well. Though it is hard now there is a reward from what I do at this immediate time.

Personal...
Another one of my grandsons had a birthday yesterday. Happy Birthday Jonathan… you are now 11 years old – WOW! I hope someday you will know that Grandpa Lincoln loves you. Oh I know you know that now… but someday it will mean more than now. Someday you will be 51 years old and look back with some good memories of grandpa that came to see you play hockey and baseball. Someday….

That is true not only for you Jonathan, but all your brothers and your cousins as well… someday you will know how much. Someday….

In forty years from now I will be 103. (It is highly unlikely that I will live that long. I am truly expecting that I will receive my eternal reward long before that time.) At the 103 year mark I will likely be a memory.

I will be that very old man in the family that had made a decision to live in many places across Canada taking his young family with him. At one point this old man made a decision to begin work in Scarborough, Ontario. After five years it was there that he left his two daughters to begin their lives on their own. It was there that they would discover their own husbands and begin their families. They in turn would make decisions that would position them in communities where their families could be established. All because of a very old man that once arrived here….

Just remember the old stump – it was there for a purpose. Old stumps are important to new young trees.

How many old stumps can you identify in you life – along your life’s way?

~ Pastor Murray Lincoln ~