In the backyard of my childhood home – the purple house for those who know – was a some forty-foot-tall cherry tree that in my memory stretched to the highest peaks of the sky. For a hundred years the tree produced the best Rainier Cherries, provided shade from the heat, and offered a home to the birds that nested in her branches. To everyone who saw her, she was a magnificent tree of great beauty and strength. To me, she might have been my closest friend.
She was the home-base when the Partlow children were playing hide-n-seek. She was a secret hideout for our G.I. Joes to climb in their latest adventure. She was a refuge to get away from life. Sitting on her branches we could read, think, dream, and pick her sweet cherries to snack on through the summer months. She was trusted with our deepest secrets, like hiding our baseball cards and candy that David and I bought before sneaking them past mom into the house. And to be sure, she allowed Patches, our dog, to mark her as his territory.
I remember the day my sister, Deanna, and I were in the tree, and got stuck. We called for dad who grumbled under his breath as he got the ladder out of the shed and came up to retrieve us like some old lady’s cat needing rescued by a fireman. I remember when bees made a hive in the trunk of the tree, and dad had to evict them. I can still hear mom’s promise that if we kids would pick and pit the cherries, she’d bake the cobbler. Mom made the best cherry cobbler. Ever. Yes, I recall the day Lehman Hall, being forewarned of the possible pits in the pie because elementary kids pitted them, bit into his serving only to discover the pit. He laughed and spat the seed out and, without reservations, finished his pie.
Years after selling the home, we found out that the owner had the tree cut down and removed. It was a sad day. She was old and her limbs were frail and known to fall, so I understood the rationale. But never once did she think of her own needs as she selflessly produced fruit, welcomed children to play in her branches, and even allowed a dog, and some boys, to pee on her. But that is, by her own nature, who she is.
If you crossed the bridge to Shel Silverstein and his beautiful story, The Giving Tree, then you’re probably not a bridge too far. In the story Silverstein walks the reader through a lifetime relationship between a boy and a fruit tree. The boy has wants and needs, and the tree’s only longing is to give the boy whatever he desires: shade in the hot sun, fruit to satisfy his hunger, branches to build a house, his trunk to build a ship, and finally a stump as a place to sit, to think, and to reflect on life. While some might criticize the book for the selfishness of the boy, the focus is on the selflessness of the tree. It is called The Giving Tree for a reason. The tree gives the boy everything, because the tree gave of herself first. It is, by nature, who she is.
For a tree to grow strong, it needs sunshine and rain. Trees also need pruning and for their fruit to be picked for consumption. Giving is an essential purpose, not only for life in general, but specifically trees. Jesus once condemned a tree for acting like it was willing to give its fruit, only to discover it was not bearing any fruit to begin with.
Paul very well could have used the analogy of a giving tree to underscore his message to the Corinthians. He didn’t, but he could have.
The Corinthians needed to make good on their promise to collect funds for the Christians in Judea suffering under a great famine. The church had promised but was now backing off from their commitment. Paul wove some beautiful words together to help motivate them to jumpstart the collecting process. In his first move, he linked grace and joy together as if they were best friends (2 Cor. 8:1-2). He says, “the grace that God has given has welled up into overflowing joy.” Grace and joy in the Greek language were homonyms as they sound alike. By linking joy and grace together with giving, the message is clear in that giving is not only a joyful expression of grace, but that it is rooted in God’s character.
As I reflect on God’s gracious giving, I cannot help but be drawn to Deuteronomy 8:3-4. Moses is preparing Israel to enter Canaan after their forty years of wandering. Those wandering years were driving by Israel’s defiant lack of faith. They constantly tested God’s mettle, even at one point revolting against Moses to elect new officials to return to Egypt. Nevertheless, for forty years they woke up every day to find bread, or Manna, on the ground to collect for their daily meal. Every single day. Then, at the end of their forty-year journey, Moses noted that their clothes never wore out. Sure, children would grow out of their sandals, but they never wore out. Both are signs of God’s gracious giving, for he offered to Israel not what they deserved but what they needed. One could say that because God gave of himself first to Israel, the gracious gifts followed with joy.
Back to Corinth, Paul propped up the churches in Macedonia, not only as an example of those who give, but also as an example of those who allowed God’s joyful grace of giving to work through them. Comparatively, the Macedonians were impoverished. Yet, they begged Paul to participate in this ministry (2 Cor. 8:4). Paul was not about to burden them with this gift, but they forced Paul’s hand. When they did give, they shattered the glass ceiling of expectation, giving far more than even Paul expected.
Paul attributes the key to their generosity in 2 Corinthians 8:5 by saying, “. . . they gave themselves first to the Lord and then to us in keeping with God’s will.” When one empties of him or herself, filling themselves with God’s Spirit, what follows is gracious generosity of giving which becomes second nature.
A couple of Scriptures highlight this principle. For instance, when Lydia opened her heart to the Lord, she opened her home to Paul and the others with him (Act. 16:15). When Paul outlines the Fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5:22-23, one of the qualities is “Goodness.” Suffering from the tradition of an early and weak translation, the word rightly means “Generosity.” We might say a good person is a generous person. Paul might say that someone filled with the Spirit is a generous person. When Jesus saw an impoverished widow giving her pennies, which was all she had, into the temple collection, he noted that she had put more in the collection than the wealthy who gave simple leftovers from their abundance (Lk. 21:4). The often-overlooked indictment from this story is that Jesus accuses the wealthy teachers of the law of devouring the homes of the widows (Lk. 20:47).
I remember my Kentucky church hosting a fish fry to raise funds from a flood that wiped out homes and devastated the community. We raised a lot of money because people arrived with open generosity. One elderly couple came to the fish fry. As he wheeled his cancer-ridden wife up to the table where we had a collection box, I watched him pull out a couple of twenty-dollar bills to drop in the box. We should have given him some money as he was in dire need. But his heart was too big, and his generosity had overcome his own needs. For when we open our hearts to the Lord first, then generosity has no limits.
My wife is known for her homemade sourdough bread. It tastes like bread from heaven, and the biggest complement we’ve been given is that it was coined “Jesus Bread” by some in the office when I began working at hospice. Some have asked why we haven’t marketed the bread and sold it. We could have, and that option is always on the table. But here’s the thing: we love giving away the bread. We love the joy of blessing others with our gift. We don’t want to take that away from us or from those we give the bread to.
Wes and Kelsey started dating in high school. On their one-year anniversary, Wes chose not to bring her flowers. Instead, he brought a tree sapling that he planted in Kelsey’s mother’s backyard. Every year, the tree grew and so did their relationship, posing before the tree for an anniversary photo opt. When Wes proposed, he did so at the tree. When they got married, they took wedding pictures with the tree. When they renewed their vows, they did so at the tree. When they were expecting their first child, a photo was taken at the tree. And now with the tree grown, dad Wes hung a swing to its branch to swing their daughter from the tree. With all the changes that are thrust upon us, and the world pulling us in all directions, Kelsey’s comment about the tree says it all, “It’s the roots that give us the wings.”
Did you catch that? The tree is all about giving because when you give of yourself first, then giving anything is easy. With the Spirit’s help, it is who we are by nature. No, we are not a giving tree, but we are a giving me.
Soli Deo Gloria!
(i.e., only God is glorified!)