Well, I finally did it. After years of checking out prices, I finally talked myself into buying one. After years of admiring those tiny leaves and gnarled branches, I mustered up the courage to bring one home. It sits in my living room window now. Soaking up the sun's rays. Reaching out for moisture. And growing… ever so slowly.
I didn't know they existed until I watched a movie called The Karate Kid. The wise old master pruned and wired and clipped away, then one day presented a lonely and mistreated boy with an ancient tree 10 inches tall. The tree spoke to the boy of endurance, of perseverance, of growth — things he would need to bring the movie to a happy end. Since then, I've wanted a bonsai tree for myself. But they looked too much like work (all that wiring and clipping). They looked too much like money (some were as much as $1,000). A few months ago, however, I found a small one for only 16 dollars and it made no sense to leave it in the store.
Please understand that I wasn't born with a green thumb. In fact, if you want to kill a plant, let me at it. I don't know what it is. I can water and weed with the best of them, but plants still die. I'm determined that things will be different with this little tree. Some nights, after the kids are tucked in, you'll find me with the perfect pruning instrument (my wife's fingernail clippers), carefully snipping, trimming, and wiring until it's all I can see when I close my eyes.
If the lady who sold me this tree is right, a well cared for bonsai tree should last a few hundred years. "Even longer than me," I told her. So I'll keep snipping, trimming, and wiring, and perhaps this tree will be around long after I've hung up the fingernail clippers. Of course, I'd like to leave behind a little more than a gnarled old tree, but after a story I heard this morning, I'm wondering what could be more important.
Just last summer, an acquaintance of mine took his 12-year-old son on a weekend fishing trip. The purpose was to teach the boy the facts of life. To let him know of the wonderful joys of married love. "Sex is a gift from God to be celebrated and saved for the one you marry," he told his son, as they stood waist-deep in a crystal clear stream, casting flies after rainbow trout.
The boy had no reason to doubt him. Not until a month later, when his dad walked out the front door with the same suitcase he'd taken on that fishing trip. He left behind a devastated family. He left behind the awful truth: For over a year he'd been having an affair with a married woman. His boy may never be the same.
Since I heard the news, I've been thinking about the stuff we leave behind. You see, whether we like it or not, the impact we make is rarely determined by the words we say, but by the life we live. Those who affect us most are not those who preach to us, but those who live their lives quietly, gracefully and faithfully, like the stars in the heavens.
Later this week, I'm going back to that store. I'm going to buy three more bonsai trees. One for each of my kids. Perhaps years from now in some far off place, they'll be able to look at a bonsai tree basking in their living room window and think of their dad.
My son Stephen is eleven now. Going on twelve. Soon be eighteen. On his 18th birthday I plan to present him with a bonsai tree. Long after that birthday, he'll still have that tree. Long after my words have stopped ringing in his ears, he'll have a small reminder of the stuff that mattered to me. I pray that the tree will speak to him of character. Of perseverance. Of faithfulness. I hope it will remind him that although I had my share of twists and bends, his father grew strong and faithful. Under the caring hand of the Master.
