Planting Acorns. Growing Trees

As a counselor, teacher and mentor I love to watch real-life stories, and read articles related to our impact on the next generation.

I once attended a graduation exercise in which a wonderful concept was flashed on the screen:

“My students are living messages to a time that I will never see.”

How true.

I have only to think of some of the, then, young and not so young adults whose instruction I “sat under” in high school, and the earnestness and spirit in which and by which they touched my life, and the lives of my classmates.

Like ships in the night we passed; as my favorite teacher of all time, Mrs. Belflower, departed this life a decade after I graduated. And I sometimes visit her gravesite, and pull a few weeds, and generally “spruce up” the place; just as she first pulled a few figurative weeds from my own life, and impacted me in a most provocative way.

I still have a junior high report card on which she wrote,

“Royce, keep at it. One day you might find you like literature.”

(I did. And I do).

Yesterday, while reading a devotional volume I came across another quotation which struck me as so similar to the one near the beginning of this blog.

“The true meaning of life is to plant trees under whose shade you never expect to sit.”

And of course, this immediately brings to mind the work of Johnny Appleseed, (John Chapman) who, in the 18^th and 19^th centuries, left a myriad of apple trees in his wake; populating several states with trees which bore fruit over the course of generations.

But, of course, the foregoing quotation is conceptual in its implication. As teachers, and mentors, and counselors, and helpers of all varieties we have been given the inestimable privilege of “planting acorns” which bear the inherent potential for growing up into full grown trees; which, in turn, will bear fruit, and propagate more trees.

And it goes without saying, we’re not talking about trees here.

For whatever reason, God has given me the wherewithal to make an inestimable difference in lives. I have counseled thousands, taught hundreds and mentored dozens. And I have every reason to believe that my time, care and efforts will be rewarded.

I may not see the end from the beginning, no more than my beloved teacher was given this same privilege. But I am sure that my work has not been in vain since even now many of my proverbial acorns have begun to sprout, and have grown up into fine young saplings.

And while I may be denied the opportunity to do so, I am convinced that, one day, others will sit under the shade of their branches.

 

By William McDonald, PhD. Excerpt from "(Mc)Donald's Daily Diary" Vol. 13

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