You will go out in joy and be led forth in peace; the mountains and hills will burst into song before you, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands (Isaiah 55:12).  Then the trees of the forest will sing for joy before the LORD; For He is coming to judge the earth (1 Chronicles 16:33).

In a Lebanon cedar

I have to confess that I’m a tree hugger of the first degree.  Trees give me joy.  And since the writer of Genesis noted that the first thing evident about the trees in the Garden of Eden is that they were beautiful, I feel my delight in trees is biblically justified (Genesis 2:9).  In fact, after humans, trees are among the most mentioned living creatures in the Bible. 

[This and many other biblically significant matters regarding trees are examined in two RBC resources: the Discovery Series booklet “Celebrating the Wonder of a Tree” and the Day of Discovery four-part series on “The Wonder of a Tree.”]

Eucalyptus curves

So it was with great joy that I had the opportunity a little over a week ago to get a major “tree fix” in visiting California’s Bay Area and Sacramento, places where our family lived from 1975 to 1982 while I served as administrator with two Christian schools.  While visiting with friends in both areas I got to see once again the big trees that so impressed me when we lived there: the towering coast redwoods, the massive sequoias of the Sierra, the impressive sugar pine, and the introduced “big tree” of Australia, the eucalyptus.

My friend Maynard Wright chauffeured me to Calaveras Big Trees State Park, not too far from Angel’s Camp, the town made famous by Mark Twain in his story “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.”  I had not been there since our two oldest boys, Greg and Eric, were just starting school in the mid-seventies.  Maynard also agreed to be my “man scale” as I made photographic records of the size of the sequoias there—plus the massive stump of the Discovery Tree, the first sequoia come upon at that location by backwoods hunter August Dowd whose accounts publicized the existence of such massive trees to the rest of the nation.  A year later 5 men with auger drills took 22 days to fell the giant tree.  Eventually the stump was planned smooth to serve as a dance floor and the trunk was leveled off to make a bar and a two lane bowling alley.  To John Muir, that act was a profanation of one of God’s great creations:  “God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand tempests and floods.  But he cannot save them from fools,” Muir said.

I can empathize with Muir.  I believe he saw these and other wonders as Job was made to see them by God after he and his “comforters” attempted to bring the infinite Creator’s  handiwork into finite human measure—a dangerous and arrogant act that we’re all too quick to attempt.  Job’s response to God’s enumeration of the wonders of His creation was apt: “I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.”  [Read the entire dialog in Job 38-42.]

I wonder if in all our attempts to reduce so much of God’s creation to mere human utility we are diminishing our souls.  In writing about Muir’s spiritual understandings of the natural world , Richard Cartwright Austin said:

The sequoia is not the root of our faith, but the sequoia lays claim to our protection in Christ’s name.  Though its size and manifest beauty make it easier for us to respond, they are not the claim.  Quite simply, God made the tree and delights in it; and for this reason we are asked to bear towards the sequoia—and towards all nature—the image of God: protector, not destroyer.