Forward Movement is an official, non-profit agency of the Episcopal Church whose mission is to create compelling content for Christian living. Since 1935 we have published the quarterly devotional Forward Day by Day, as well as pamphlets, booklets, and books that encourage and nourish people in their lives of prayer and faith.
SATURDAY, April 23 Holy Saturday
Job 14:1-14. For there is hope for a tree, if it is cut down, that it will sprout again, and its shoots will not cease.
Not long after I was imprisoned, my Dad told me the story of an eastern short-leaf pine that was growing up through a rock not far from his house. There was no visible sustenance for this little pine tree—just bare, moss-covered sandstone—and, yet, there it was, sprouting away.
Dad went on to tell me that I would do well to imitate that little tree, to grow where I was, despite the apparent lack of conventional nourishment. Of course, like most good advice I received in those days, it went over my head. That didn’t stop my Dad from giving me regular reports on “the little pine.”
Right out of that half-ton rock it continued to grow. One foot. Three feet. “Son, it’s as tall as I am now.” But for me, “the little pine” was just a quaint story my Dad repeated, probably to keep his spirits up. I could envision a tree growing out of a rock, but I couldn’t feel the connection.
That is, not until I got out of prison and stood under the twelve-foot pine and looked down where it had broken the rock as it grew.
PRAY for Navajoland Area Mission (Province VIII, USA)
Ps 31:1-4, 15-16; Job 14:1-14 or Lamentations 3:1-9, 19-24; 1 Peter 4:1-8; Matthew 27:57-66 or John 19:38-42
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