The
day didn’t start out much different from any other Monday. We took an early morning walk, and then I
attacked my weekly task list. After
lunch we decided to get some errands done.
Simple stuff, really. Bank. Randall’s to get some stamps and pick up a
prescription. WalMart for some groceries. Everything was going quite smoothly, in fact.
Somewhere
around the toilet paper, Chris made the comment, Hear that? It’s really raining.” The roof at WalMart does an admirable job of
amplifying sound in a big way. And then,
as we rounded the cereal aisle and glanced at the door to the outside, we could
see it. Well, that’s not exactly
accurate. We couldn’t see it would be
closer. It was raining so hard we
couldn’t see the cars in the parking lot.
In fact we couldn’t even see the parking lot. We couldn’t see much past the doors. Our concerns then shifted to whether or not
the power would go out and shut down all the computers, making the trip a waste
of time. We slowed our pace
considerably, not wanting to face such an onslaught of Galveston dampness.
Finally
we headed for the exits, made our purchases and wheeled out to the car. The rain had slowed to a drizzle, so we didn’t
even get all that wet. There was a lot
of standing water between our house and the store, but we managed to navigate around
the deepest of the puddles. Even
unloading the car at home went by quickly and fairly dry-ly. I began getting ready to take a shower and
settle in to watch the Astros game.
Finally, a sleepy, boring Monday …
And
Chris called out, “We have some tree branches down in the back yard.” Tree branches? We have a big palm tree back there, but those
branches wouldn’t have elicited such an impassioned response. We also have a Brazilian Pepper tree, an
invasive species that provides a lot of shade and grows quickly and is
virtually impossible to kill. It is
technically part of the 40 Steps lot next door, but it grew up right on the
fence line, so I have been nurturing it over the years to take advantage of the
shade. That had to be the branch down
culprit. So we went outside to check it
out more closely.
And
boy was it ever the branch offender. We couldn’t
tell for sure if lightning was involved.
There were some really charred looking spots, but it was hard to tell
what that might have been. See, the
branches were down, resting on the ground in fact. But they were also still attached to the
tree. One really big branch had twisted
and split, but was refusing to actually commit to breaking it off completely. I think there is a teaching in there
somewhere about breaking off bad relationships or maybe making a clean break
from the sin in your life. The biggest
thing to remember in those situations (aside from the forgiveness available in
Christ) is the fact that there will be consequences that someone will have to
deal with. In this case we became the
consequence dealers-with. I no longer
have a chain saw. Mine died a while
back. So I attacked the downed limb with
a pair of those clippers with really long handles designed for tree
pruning. Chris hauled the lopped-off
limbs to the street. We still have a lot
of pruning to do, but we did clear it off the fence and off the satsuma tree in
the corner of the yard. I would have
hated to lose that thing. It has a lot
of fruit on it this year. So Nathan,
crank up that little chain saw on a stick that you bought and bring it
over. We have some work to do.
1
Corinthians 1:10 says, “I appeal to you,
brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one
another so that there may be no divisions among you and that you may be perfectly
united in mind and thought.”
Father,
thank you that the damage was really minimal and was limited to the TTRTD (Tree
That Refuses To Die). Amen.
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