Two Trees

By Ning-zi

Some years after I came abroad I went through a period of deep depression. I felt as if everything and everybody in the world had let me down. I was afraid of everyone. I was like a small child terrified by the howling of the wind in the night. As my thoughts went round and round in the night I would think back to a willow tree I had known as a child. I yearned for the familiar whisper of the willow, and longed for a good friend to sit and listen to me under that tree.

One day, as the morning sunlight penetrated the curtain and streamed into my room I was reading Robert Shaw's Happy Life, in which he told a story about an oak tree, immortalised in a song by Orlando, the pop music composer:

Three children were on a train in New Jersey. Behind them sat an elderly man in ragged clothes. Everyone had to get off at the next stop and one of the children said to the old man, "Come on, you get off the train with us. The exercise will do you good." So the old man got out and the children invited him to join them for lunch. They told the old man that they were going to Florida for the weekend and how beautiful the weather in Florida was.

The old man replied, "Yes, I know."

"Have you been there?"

"I used to live in Florida."

"Do any of your family still live there?"

The old man hesitated a little and then he murmured: "I don't know."

Many years previously he had been sent to jail and he had told his wife never to write to him, and that if she did he would not write back . He asked her not to let their children know he was in jail and said that, if she wished, she might be able to find a man who would be a good father to their children.

Just a week ago, he had been released. He hurriedly wrote to his family in Jacksonville, "If you're still living here and get this letter and if you still haven't got another man and if you are still willing to accept me, then please tie a piece of white cloth to the old oak tree outside the town so that I can see it when the train passes."

As the train neared the town the three children and the old man rushed to the window. There stood the old oak tree, right in front of them, and tied to it was not just one piece of white cloth. There was a white sheet, a white pillow case, a white dress and a little boy's pair of white pants. The entire oak tree was dressed in white!

Oh, what an impact that picture had on me! It was as if I had touched the very soul of this wonderful story. I remember Chamberlain the poet once said: "A great person has two hearts: one of them bleeds, and the other forgives."

I copied the story of the oak tree on to a sheet of white paper and kept it with me. I believe that God had been keeping this little story for me for many long years and He planned that some day I should read it. And He wanted me to realise the place the old oak tree was to occupy in my life! He knew that the little girl who was so afraid of the wind in the night was one day going to step out of the backyard and set off on a long journey. She would meet up with many people whose temperaments would be different from hers; she would go through a lot of sad experiences. There would be little trains which would bring into her little town people who would make her suffer. The willow tree from her childhood would no longer be able to help her stand against the world's buffetings. So He had planted for her an old oak tree on the outskirts of her town and He was right under the tree waiting for her...

After a struggle, I finally stepped out of my locked-up room. In the midst of the fierce winds I wanted to find the old oak tree that had been prepared for me. Then from afar, I saw him standing in the cold night, his eyes filled with sorrow...

I fell down at his feet. He tore off a piece of his white robe to bind up my wounds. Then I saw the nail marks on his hands, and I wept.

He tore yet another piece off his white robe to wipe away my tears. Then he gave it to me and said gently:

"Tie it to the old oak tree!"

Since then, the white cloth on the old oak tree has become a focal point for my life. On the canvas of my life there are now two old trees: one uses its unfailing life to shield me from the cold wind, and the other builds an unfailing life into me so that I can stand in the cold wind and face the cold world. And as I grasp the key significance of the relationship between these two trees, I know I have begun to to be filled with the wonder of God's master-plan for my life. So I gladly accept each detail of what He has arranged for me. Be it joy or sadness, as long as I receive it from His hand, it is part of His great story. Only through the separate details He chooses for me can I discern the deep over-all theme He has for my life

The author came from Nanjing. Now she lives in Los Angeles.