The beavers of Wildwood Lake have been at it again. Several years ago, from the look of the resulting tree carcass, the neighborhood beavers felled a very large tree that formerly stood at the south end of my back yard along the lake shore. The previous owners could have struggled to clean up this pile of firewood, but I’m rather glad they didn’t. When the water gets a little warmer, I’ll find that a host of bass use the branches and trunk of that old tree for their favorite hide out. So long as I stick with snag-free lures, I can fish productively there all spring and summer.
The current beaver activity is less welcome, although it has the advantage of being on my neighbor’s side of the property line. They dropped a couple of very small trees, perhaps two inches in diameter at the base, a while back and lugged off the remains. More seriously, though, they’ve been working on a much larger tree, maybe eight inches in diameter, leaving a large swath of exposed inner wood. Even if the beavers don’t return, I have to expect that this tree has received a mortal blow. If it were my tree, I’d be wrapped it up with chicken wire and perhaps surrounding it with bungee sticks to keep the beavers away. On the other hand, maybe I should be glad that my neighbor doesn’t take such steps since that would just drive the beavers toward my trees.
I don’t begrudge the beavers their livelihood. I’d be happy to let them cut all of the grass that they’d like to cut. Grass, as we all know entirely too well, grows back far more quickly than we’d like it to. If trees grew back as readily, I’d be happy to allow the beavers to have their fun. But trees aren’t so accommodating. When is the best time to plant a tree? Twenty years ago. When I look at my yard, I realize that any new tree I choose to plant today won’t even approach maturity until I’m retired, until Sydney and Ira are out of high school. That sort of thinking motivates me against the beavers.
Are you like me as you read today’s account of trees being felled? Do you feel a certain uncertainty about this passage? As the passage begins, “they”—the Assyrians presumably—are doing the destroying, but later, when the trees of Lebanon start to fall, it is the Lord who is out-chopping Paul Bunyan. What are we to make of this? What comfort can we take from these words? It’s no wonder, as we read this rather ambivalent passage, that scholars have felt that the first half of Isaiah was too bleak to have been written by the same hand that penned the second half. Once the tree falls to the ground, there’s not much that can be done to remedy the situation.
Once again, we have to recognize that our God is not some benevolent senior citizen in the sky. Our God is active and, at times, destructive. He’ll knock down the forest in accomplishing his ends. The question, however, is whether, like Wildwood’s beavers, he simply fells the trees and leaves them to rot. We’ll take that up tomorrow.
Tune My Heart is primarily an aid to the devotional life of its author, Mark Browning, who holds the copyright for this material. It is provided online in hopes that some will find it edifying. All contents, unless otherwise noted, may be redistributed freely provided that you give credit for its origin and do not charge anything.