A Tree and Trust

I just received a package in the mail. The bright eBay logo on the side tells me it’s the one I’ve been waiting for.

Last week, I won an auction for a retro aluminum Christmas tree. They’re hard to find because companies stopped making them in the sixties.

I set the box on my counter and slice it open with my pocket knife. Inside the box is a stand, a trunk, and bundles of branches. The stand and the trunk fit together easily enough. But I pause when I start unwrapping the branches.

They’re all exactly the same length. Every branch.

If I put these on the trunk, this is not going to look like a tree. It’s going to look like an aluminum can.

I’m frustrated. Somebody ripped me off. The seller must have cobbled together this tree from a bunch of different ones. I probably have the bottom branches of about five aluminum trees. 

Great, now I’m going to have to email the seller and try to return this thing. That also means a trip to the post office during December.

I decide I should take a picture just in case the seller disputes the return. The best way for me to do that is to actually put the “tree” together, so I begin to place the bottom circle of branches into the trunk. Tiny strips of aluminum shake as I slip each branch into its spot.

I start the second row. Oddly, each branch is at a slightly higher angle than the branches on the bottom row were.

By the time I reach the third row, I’ve figured out this pattern. Because the angles of the holes increase with each rung up the tree, the branches look shorter the higher they go.

This is going to look like a tree after all.

As I insert the rest of the branches, I think about how I often struggle to understand God’s plans for me. I see all the pieces of my life, and I wonder how things will work out.

What job will I have in five years? Where will I live? Will I be married?

But instead of wondering—instead of worrying—I need to trust God. Trust that he can see the patterns that I can’t yet. Trust that he is in control and that he is shaping my life in minute but definite ways.

I’m done with the branches now. I stand back and stare at what most definitely looks like a tree.

It’s everything I hoped. And now, it will remind me to trust the One who is guiding my life step by step.