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What Christmas Trees Teach
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One of the most visible signs of the Christmas season is the evergreen. One pastor in North Carolina has a special interest in these holiday symbols…since he nurtured his own crop of trees for almost twenty years. Now he’s written a book to share the lessons he learned about helping living things grow, and thrive. Reed Galin has the story. |
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SCRIPT:
(Locator: Warrensville, NC)
The Rev. Michael Kurtz (reading from book): “Christmas tree farmers cannot expect a good crop of trees if they plant the seedlings in the ground and let them grow on their own.”
Michael Kurtz learned a lot about Christmas trees in the two decades he spent growing them in the Appalachian mountains.
The Rev. Michael Kurtz: “There are lessons for living in nature, from God.”
Kurtz later became a United Methodist minister and started noticing similarities between raising Christmas trees… and the human spirit.
The Rev. Michael Kurtz: “Looking at the phases of the planting, and then looking at the cultivating, and then looking at the harvest. It made sense, analogously, to life, to human life.”
Pastor Kurtz is the author of “Lessons from a Christmas Tree Farm.” He says it takes careful nurturing to transform a Fraser fir into a Christmas tree, starting when seedlings are given intensive care in a nursery.
The Rev. Michael Kurtz: “I find that in our lives, we need that care, too.”
And Christmas trees must be carefully shaped, often by hand.
The Rev. Michael Kurtz: “There’s a necessity of the master gardener to shear our life, if you will, or prune our life, so we can cut away all that extra that’s not needed.”
The Fraser fir is the Cadillac of Christmas trees because of its shape and color. But Kurtz says just as people are unique, so are the Christmas trees.
The Rev. Michael Kurtz: “They have a different look, they have a different size, they have a different color. And, to me, that again speaks to the diversity of people.”
Kurtz is hoping his agricultural analogies will be a guideline for better living… using lessons from the trees.
TAG:
Growers say it takes a long time to raise a Christmas tree that’s ready to be decorated in your home. The average age of the Fraser firs sold during the holidays is 10 to 15 years.
Lessons from a Christmas Tree Farm: A Devotional
and Study Guide Resource is published by iUniverse Inc. of Lincoln,
Neb. For more information, go to
www.iuniverse.com/bookstore and do a title search.