Daily Devotions and Podcasts

SCRIPTURE Gensis 13:18 Then Abram moved his tent and came and dwelt by the oaks of Mamre, which are in Hebron, and there he built an altar to God. Now the Lord appeared to him by the oaks of Mamre, while he was sitting at the tent door in the heat of the day. Gensis 18:1 WORDS OF HOPE I used to say—only half-jokingly—that I hoped I died before she did. Over the years our relationship had become, well, intimate in a way I hadn’t thought possible. I’d always loved her long-limbed beauty, the way her branches stretched across space as if she were yearning for the light. But I think that it was after the arborist broke the news that she had a disease that would eventually take her down that my heart opened to her even more deeply. I ordered special organic nutrients to be injected into the soil several times a year to bolster her system. As with any other loved one, I would try to extend her life as long as I could. Greeting her every morning as Sage and I go for our walk, I speak my love and gratitude for her strength and beauty. She has endured for 65 years through thunder storms with strong winds, lashing rains, and even hail. Sometimes I slide my palm over her rough bark and tousle the leafy green clusters which wave their greeting. And oh, how her fall glory electrifies! Perhaps my Irish heritage imbued me with the blood of Druids, a people for whom the great oaks are sacred sanctuaries. Last week while talking to a neighbor, I heard a lightening-scale crack and thunderous thud as the fissure in her massive trunk split open and she crashed to the ground. When we arrived at the house, the great sheltering canopy of Grandmother Red Oak lay splayed and broken all over the yard. That night, after a skilled tree removal person had been secured, grief came. Tears fell and memories surfaced—like the summer a mother owl and her four fledglings held vigil in her branches at night. At dusk I walked among the beautiful wreckage and prayed and spoke to her. Tears washed my cheeks again in the morning while Isidoro and his son set about their work. I asked him if he would cut me a few pieces to keep. He did not think that was foolish and produced strong, solid, beautifully grained sections.  Sometime in the second day of my grief, I thought: This is not just my loss. The Mississippi Kites who have been perching in some bare branches before their morning flight have had to relocate. The blue jays who year after year raise their families there have lost their home—and the squirrels who rest in the heat of the day on her broad branches and scramble about in play and harvest her acorns for food are displaced. All have lost something. Even the young cotton tail who finds shade and water underneath her looks confused as she sits on the edge of the yard and peers into a transformed landscape. As I pray for these creatures, the lessons of adaptability and resilience come to mind, teaching me as well. And I take some comfort in the one remaining section of Grandmother that is still alive and green and in the hope that even after the terrible breaking she will thrive. A new sitting area graces the front yard—centered around the large oak sections cut for me, and now holding aloe vera and summery petunia, with small agaves at the base. It will be a kind of outdoor altar for the sacred oak, for all the beauty and strength and grace and blessing she brought. At the thought of the welcome this new setting offers, I smile in gratitude. Receive this blessing: “Blessed are the ones who trust in the LORD, whose confidence is in God. They will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. They do not fear when heat comes; their leaves are always green.” Jeremiah 7-8 adapted DEVOTION AUTHOR Dr. Pat Saxon