Lessons from the Maple Tree

Ed McClanahan

I live on several acres of land with an abundance of trees. I’m sure there’s a variety of them, but the most prevalent are Cedar, Douglas Fir, and Maple trees. I have a love/hate relationship with my trees. First of all, they’re beautiful and give off oxygen that we need to breathe. Trees reduce the amount of stormwater runoff, which reduces erosion and pollution in our waterways and can reduce the effects of flooding. They can also serve as an excellent windbreak and/or provide important shade from the sun. Many species of wildlife that we enjoy watching depend on trees for habitat. Trees also provide food, protection, and homes for many birds and other fun critters.

Trees can also be a pain in the……buttocks!! All of them love to fill up my gutters with debris. I sometimes wonder if they hear me cursing at them when I’m out unclogging my downspouts! Cedars by their very nature lose one third of their foliage annually. That foliage suffocates my lawn and garden beds, and must constantly be picked up and discarded before the piles become too big to manage. The Douglas Fir trees drop branches and pollen cones everywhere. But the Maple tree might be the king menace. Not only does it grow in crazy directions, and flood you with leaves in the fall, it will also drop large branches at inopportune times because they’ve become too large for the trunk to hold them. To make matters worse, they drop hundreds of little “helicopters” to the ground in the spring in an attempt to birth even more maple trees where you don’t want them! Perhaps my biggest complaint about maples is that even if you cut one down, it grows right back! You either have to grind the stump down below the surface and bury it, or apply a product meant to kill it while covering it with a tarp so the sun can’t reverse your efforts!

I find sin to be a lot like a maple tree. The enemy of my soul is constantly dropping bad thoughts or ideas in my mind, just like the maple drops its “helicopter” seeds looking for a place to take root. And even if I’m successful at taking those thoughts captive and forcing them to be obedient to Christ (2 Corinthians 10:3-5), they sprout right back up again like a maple stump.

Romans 7:14-25 says:
“We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it. So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!”

I hang my hat on those last two verses. Who will rescue me from my sinful nature that leads to death? Jesus Christ our Lord! Hallelujah!