Trees of Righteousness

Once again I have chosen to revisit Isaiah 61:3 (look it up) because the idea that the Lord is willing to prune me to help me become a “tree of righteousness” is so inspiring to me that it just pops into my mind from time to time. I do want to live up to the potential he sees in me – which I often do not see in myself as clearly as he does – but which must be there if he sees it. So I am willing to keep trying.

Just east of Bremerton, Washington is lovely oasis called Elandan Gardens. It is the life’s work of bonsai master Dan Robinson. He says on his website:

Welcome to Elandan Gardens. Visit our waterfront gardens to experience the world-class bonsai collection and landscape artistry of Dan Robinson. Our bonsai museum is set among ponds, waterfalls, sculptures and lush gardens on the shores of Puget Sound….The collection, which includes trees more than 1000 years old, represents Dan's 50+ years of dedication to the art of bonsai.

In 2006, when my daughter was still in graduate school at Eastern Washington State, we (me, my wife, and my mother) went to Cheney, Washington to take my daughter on a spring break trip to Seattle. We had a wonderful time (great food, Space Needle, Fish Market, etc.), but for me, the highlight of the entire trip (besides seeing my daughter) was a visit to Elandan Gardens.

A shift in location: Muir Woods National Monument is 813 miles south along the Pacific Coast from Elandan Gardens. Its 400+ acres contain hundreds of old growth giant sequoias. The biggest of these behemoths, named the General Sherman, stands 275 feet tall, has a 102-foot circumference, and weighs an incredible 2.7 million lbs. Giant sequoias can live to be 3,000 years old, with the oldest on record living more than 3,500 years.

Back to Elandan Gardens. One of the most impressive bonsai for me was a small pot that contained three giant sequoias that were less than 3 feet tall and were 30 years old in 2006. They resembled giant sequoias in every way, except for size.

Do you see the contrast? I can see some of the “trees of righteousness” of which the Savior spoke represented by the General Sherman tree and others like him. The Savior will gladly help us to achieve that stature if that is His vision for us. He is the eternal bonsai master. President Harold B. Lee was called to be an Apostle on April 6, 1941. Daniel H. Ludlow, in his Encyclopedia of Mormonism, tells us:

Elder Lee was called as a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles on April 6, 1941. As he looked around the council room in the Salt Lake Temple where the quorum held its meetings, Elder Lee, then forty-two, discovered that every man there was at least twenty years his senior. He thought of himself as a seedling among giant redwoods, causing his tutor and friend J. Reuben Clark, Jr., a counselor in the First Presidency, to refer affectionately to him as the "Kid."

In my mind, any man who is called as an Apostle is already a “tree of righteousness.” He may feel that there is still considerable growth potential, as all of us do. But I suppose that the viewpoint is relative for all of us. He viewed himself as a sapling, but we tended to view him as having great stature in our eyes and in the eyes of the Lord. Lucile C. Tate, in her book about Boyd K. Packer, titled Boyd K. Packer: A Watchman on the Tower, tells us:

… just eighteen months after President Lee had been sustained [as the president of the Church], he died on 26 December 1973 at age seventy-four.

On that same day Spencer W. Kimball, President of the Quorum of the Twelve, was sustained as President of the Church. He was seventy-eight years of age. … Said he at the funeral services, "A giant redwood has fallen and left a great space in the forest.… Yes, among our generation has walked one of God's most noble, powerful, committed, and …foreordained giant redwoods-President Harold B. Lee."

…Incredible as it was to President Kimball, the responsibility of watching over and guiding the affairs of the kingdom now rested upon him. Soon after he had moved into the office of the President of the Church, Elder Packer took for his approval the article he had been asked to write about President Kimball for the March 1974 Ensign. He found the President seated at his desk weeping. Concerned, he asked, "President Kimball, what is the matter?"

"I am such a little man for such a big responsibility!" was the quiet response.

 

In my mind, what the Lord is telling us, when he says that he will make of us “trees of righteousness.” is that He is the eternal bonsai master and His vision for each of us is as different as we are individually. We can’t all be apostles. We can’t all be bishops or relief society presidents. We can be “trees of righteousness.” fit for the kingdom and prepared to serve. So many different visions emerge as we consider the Lord In that role.

One vision is that Satan would have us believe that we are as the Elandan Gardens bonsai sequoias, confined and small, not capable of living so as to become great “trees of righteousness.” He would cruelly trim our branches and prune our roots to keep us from our potential. His great desire is that we be as miserable and stunted as he is – he has no conscience, he cannot enter mortality, receive a body, work out his salvation, or return to his Father-in-Heaven. His only victory lies in capturing individual souls and dragging them down with him – taking his own brothers and sisters away from Father and the Celestial Kingdom.

The giant sequoias and redwoods seem to me to be examples of one kind of the Lord’s bonsai. It’s important to note that Satan prunes for control and eventual destruction. The Lord prunes for growth and eventual glory in the Celestial kingdom. I believe that the Lord’s vision is different for each of us.

The Lord’s prunings may be even more severe than those of Satan, but they are always for our good. In the April 2011 General Conference Elder D. Todd Christofferson of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, in his talk, As Many as I Love, I Rebuke and Chasten, remembers a lesson from Elder Hugh B. Brown:

He told of purchasing a rundown farm in Canada many years ago. As he went about cleaning up and repairing his property, he came across a currant bush that had grown over six feet (1.8 m) high and was yielding no berries, so he pruned it back drastically, leaving only small stumps. Then he saw a drop like a tear on the top of each of these little stumps, as if the currant bush were crying, and thought he heard it say:

“How could you do this to me? I was making such wonderful growth. … And now you have cut me down. Every plant in the garden will look down on me. … How could you do this to me? I thought you were the gardener here.”

President Brown replied, “Look, little currant bush, I am the gardener here, and I know what I want you to be. I didn’t intend you to be a fruit tree or a shade tree. I want you to be a currant bush, and someday, little currant bush, when you are laden with fruit, you are going to say, ‘Thank you, Mr. Gardener, for loving me enough to cut me down.’”

 

As noted on the website https://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/wilderness-resources:

Until 2013, Methuselah, an ancient bristlecone pine was the oldest known non-clonal organism on Earth. While Methuselah still stands as of 2016 at the ripe old age of 4,848 in the White Mountains of California, in Inyo National Forest, another bristlecone pine in the area was discovered to be over 5,000 years old.

These trees appear stunted – their trunks are twisted as if in agony. They bear only small foliage, but they have a special and miraculous beauty all their own. They have survived in spite of wind, sun, rain and old age. So must we survive and grow from the pruning of the Lord, to become currant bushes, bristlecone pines, giant sequoias, or any of hundreds of other kinds of “trees of righteousness.”

Please don’t misunderstand me. Dan Robinson’s life work is incredibly beautiful and is evidence of his patience and love of the art. His work will never be complete but will go on pleasing the eye and gladdening the soul long after he has departed this mortal vale. In fact, whoever takes over responsibility for his bonsai and gardens will not complete the work. Nor will his successor, or his successor – well cared for bonsai can live for hundreds of years. But giant sequoias or currant bushes are only the beginning. President Russell M. Nelson said:

We were born to die and we die to live. As seedlings of God, we barely blossom on earth; we fully flower in Heaven.