Luke 13:19
19 It is like a grain of mustard seed, which a man took, and cast into his garden; and it grew, and waxed a great tree; and the fowls of the air lodged in the branches of it.
Three Great Trees
A great tree. Luke 13:19 (AV).
“A great tree” that is our text this morning. I am just sorry it is not “three great trees,” for I am going to tell you this morning of three great trees, each of which is great in more ways than one.
The trees of which I am going to speak are alive at this moment, so far as I know. They are all to be found in the north-east corner of Scotland, and they are growing not so very far apart. You could see them all in one day if you had a cycle, for the first and the second are growing within a mile or two of each other, and the third is distant only about thirty miles from the first.
1. The first great tree grows at the edge of a wood close to the road. You can hardly fail to notice it as you walk past. If your eyes are sharp you will look twice at it and then you will exclaim, “How very odd!” No wonder! This extraordinary tree is not one tree, but two trees in one. About a foot from the ground the trunk, which is that of a beech, divides in two. One-half goes on growing as a beech, but the other turns into an ash. You can pick out its stem at once in contrast with that of the beech, and if you look up you will see far overhead branches of ash leaves and branches of beech leaves mingling in the friendliest fashion. How did these trees come to be one? Who can tell? They are old trees now, and they have been sharing the same roots for many and many a year. There is no quarrelling who shall have the most sap, or who shall get the greatest amount of sunshine. They have shared and shared alike all their lives, and that is how people stop to admire them today.
I wish we were all as ready as that tree to share our good things. I am afraid some of us are more like the little girl who had a sister a year older than herself. Whatever the older sister got the younger insisted on having also. Her favorite words were, “Me too!” One day the older girl was ill and the doctor ordered her medicine with a particularly horrid taste. Little sister saw the bottle, and she saw mother measuring out a spoonful into a glass for the invalid. As usual she cried, “Me too!” And mother thought it would be a good lesson for little sister, and she knew the medicine would do her no harm, so she gave “Me too” an overflowing spoonful. After that “Me too” was less heard in the nursery.
Now which do you admire most the twin trees or little “Me too”? I know which I admire, and which I wish you to copy.
2. The second tree is a lime tree. It is growing in the grounds of a famous castle, and it is almost as famous as the castle itself. It is carefully preserved and has a railing round it, and the Duke who owns it is tremendously proud of it. Well may he be! How big do you think it is? Well, you may not believe me when I tell you, but it covers half an acre of ground. It is so huge that they say 1000 men can stand under its shade. How did it manage to grow so great? I can tell you in three words by being humble. When it spread its long branches it did not lift them haughtily to heaven, it bent them meekly towards the earth. And these branches as they swept the ground took root and sprang up again around their parent tree, so that besides the great main stem there are countless smaller stems steadying and supporting and feeding that great tree. Like all truly great people that splendid lime is humble. You see you can never be truly great unless you are first truly humble.
They tell a tale of a certain royal princess who is living today. When she was a young girl she was crossing a gangway from a ship to the quay, and her foot slipped. She would have fallen but a sailor on the ship put out a hand and steadied her, saying, “Take care, Miss!” The princess, I suppose, was rather cross about having tripped, and she turned round and said sharply, “Don't call me ‘Miss'! Remember I am a Princess. ” The sailor looked rather put out, but the Queen, who was walking behind her daughter, had heard the rebuke. She turned to the sailor and said graciously, “Thank you very much indeed for your kindness. My daughter, as she says, is a princess; but we hope some day she will be a lady.” That wise Queen knew that to be proud was to be merely small, and to be humble was to be really great. Boys and girls, which do you admire most the giant tree or the silly princess?
3. The third tree is an oak. To my mind it is the greatest of the three great trees, although you may not agree with me at the first glance. It grows, like the first tree, near the high road. But, alas! it does not stand up straight and tall. A winter's gale has blown it over, and it lies on its side with three-quarters of its roots sticking up in the air. Its leafy top, too, has been sawn away, for it fell across the road, and so it has only about twenty feet of trunk left. Do you think it has given up and ceased to grow because it has lost all its head, and most of its roots? Not a bit of it! It is as busy as ever sending out branches and leaves on the piece of trunk which remains.
And so I think that tree is the greatest of the three trees because it is so brave and plucky. You would have quite excused it if, when the wind knocked it over and the saw beheaded it, it had said, “It's no use growing any more. I'm done. All I can do now is to die.” But that oak was no ordinary oak. It had plenty of pluck, and with its six remaining roots it set to work to make itself over again.
Boys and girls, I want you to imitate that oak. Never acknowledge you are beaten. Stick in! What are difficulties and obstacles? They are just chances to show your mettle. Keep smiling and keep going on when it would be easier to sit down and weep. Though you should lose everything else in the world, never lose heart. That's pluck. And it is pluck that wins in life. You admire it, I admire it, everyone admires it. And, let me tell you a secret, God admires it most of all.