Music From Out of the Trees

I have an amazing pile of sticks in my backyard; over the past several weeks, it has continued to grow, it has overflowed the rock borders of the fire pit, and now looms several feet high. It is a sight to behold, and I created it with my own two hands.

In our backyard, there are somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty five trees; that doesn’t count the trees that overhang our yard from our neighbors’ fence line, and the hundreds of trees in the woods that border our land.  White oak, water oak, cedar, pine, sweetgum, blackthorn…….. and those are only the ones I know by sight. So as you can imagine, my backyard is awash with hundreds, maybe thousands, of sticks and twigs. They fall from the trees like the autumn leaves; I can hear the soft crackle in the night, as they tumble down. Each rainstorm brings a new crop, littered across the landscape like so much shrapnel.

A few weeks ago, I decided that I would rid my yard of these nuisance sticks; so each time I took Bitsy Jo outside, I would pick up as many sticks as I could carry in both my hands, depositing them into the fire pit. Multiply two handfuls of sticks by ever how many times a little dog needs to go outside every day, and you soon have a handsome pile of sticks.

Someday soon, that pile will be ripe for burning. Someday, when the wind is just right, and when I have a full package of hot dogs in my fridge, I plan to set that stick pile on fire.  And what an amazing fire that will make…

Oddly enough, I have noticed that even with the hundreds of sticks I have picked up, the ground is still littered with more. If I pick up twenty sticks, there are forty more that I see; if I pick up fifty, I see a hundred more. After some time, I began to wonder why I even bothered; I didn’t seem to be able to make a dent in that nasty stick population. I began to think it wasn’t worth the effort. The more I picked up, the more I saw that needed picking up.

And so it is with the landscape of my life; I find it littered with hundreds of twigs that need to be disposed of. Twigs of selfishness, twigs of thoughtlessness, sticks of unkindness and wrong thoughts….. It seems as if the more I work on these things, the more that I find still needing attention. It is so easy to become discouraged, and to be tempted to give up.

My Heavenly Father is so patient and gentle with me; He never belittles me or makes me feel guilty. It is only the sting of my own guilt that I feel, and not His.  I found myself pondering these things this morning as I stood with both hands full of sticks, surveying the hundred others that I had missed.

"Raise your eyes," I heard my Father whisper. "Raise your eyes and look at how many you’ve collected." And there, across the yard stood my magnificent pile of sticks. "Look at how far you’ve come," He reminded me, "and not at what is left."

I got it. Right then and there, standing there in the wet grass, still in my pajamas with my hair sticking up all over my head. I got it.

My Heavenly Father is collecting the sticks from my life, in His timing and at His choosing. He is removing those things that do not bring Him honor, and He has a great pile of them already discarded. I vow to look at how far I’ve come, how far He has brought me,  and not at how much is left to do.

And someday, when the wind of the Holy Spirit is just right, He will set them on fire, and there will remain not one of them. And what an amazing Fire that will be.

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My Two Favorite Girls