MORNING MANNA 11-5-24
THE EXAMPLE OF THE PINE TREE
“My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations; knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience. But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing.” James 1:2-4
One day a boy and his father went into the mountains. They took shelter from a storm in the lee of some great gray boulders that lay like sleeping giants close to the crest of a lonely ridge. As the two looked upward, they saw the wind lay its grim hands on a mountain pine that towered from the summit of the ridge. It was a sentinel that could escape no danger, an outpost to receive the first shock of the enemy’s attack. Savagely the wind tore at it, shook it violently, and howled through the branches.
To the boy, the tree, strong though it was, seemed about to be torn to pieces. “Look, Father!” he said, pining upward, “what the wind is doing to that pine!” The full fury of the blast just then made the pine shudder and sway. It heaved desperately against the black sky.
“Storms are an old story to that tree,” said the father. “A tree like that lives in a struggle from the time it is high enough to catch the first breath of air. Tennyson says a tree is ‘storm-strengthened on a windy site.’ The strongest trees are always those that have weathered the greatest number of gales. Besides, the question is not what is happening to the tree, but what is happening in the tree.”
“The pine does not really seem to mind fighting the storm, does it?” the boy asked.
“No, because it is able to withstand the strongest wind,” the father answered. “It is the same with us. It really does not matter what happens to us, but it matters a great deal what happens in us.” (copied)
There are a great many folks who need to stop resisting and resenting the storms and leave the results with God. They need to bend with the wind and let God do His work within! HDS
David Stone
Lakeway Baptist Church
Humble, TX
