The Ugly Tree

When I first graduated from college and was a newlywed husband, I was eager to create a thriving business. Like a good entrepreneur, I looked around for a unique advantage and realized I was living on it—the Goble Ranch. My dad owned the property but he was willing to let us experiment with whatever ideas we had.

So my wife and I, figuring the land was free and the opportunities endless, planted several thousand trees. It’s not as impressive as it sounds. These were tiny seedlings, maybe a nickel apiece.

Most of the trees were meant to launch a Christmas tree farm. The Christmas tree farm would be cool, right? Plant a tree for a nickel on free land, then sell it for several dollars by the foot to a suburban family a few years later. Seemed like pure profit.

Other trees were planted for more practical reasons, like to block the wind or just to make the place look nice. 

Unfortunately…within a year, all but one of them was dead.

Floods wiped out the pines. Goodbye, Christmas tree farm. Rabbits gnawed through hundreds of tender trunks, so goodbye to the pretty trees. The rest just withered in the sun, including the ones we planted as a windbreak.

But one stubborn Beefwood tree refused to die.

Beefwood. Really? These trees are ridiculous. It would be great to say it was a majestic beauty, like an oak, redwood, or sycamore. It’s not. It’s ugly. Beefwoods are scraggly and awkward, their branches never quite knowing which direction to grow. Their needles fall and sour the soil. The birds ignore them. 

But this one Beefwood survived.

For decades, it stood there as a reminder—at least to me—of failure. Thousands of seedlings gone, and this one awkward misfit left behind. Even now, standing some forty feet tall, it blocks part of the view. I’ve thought about cutting it down more than once.

But after all these years, that tree has finally earned my respect. It has outlasted floods, drought, fires, neglect, and time itself. It’s not impressive looking, and serves no known purpose, but it’s still standing.

There’s something holy about that kind of endurance.

Many of the things we plant in life—ideas, plans, dreams, vocations—don’t turn out the way we imagined. Some fail fast, some fade slowly, most evolve in ways we never expected. But every once in a while, something survives and thrives. 

And maybe that’s how God intended it. We plant, but we don’t control the growth. We tend the soil, but the results are out of our hands. It’s frustrating, because we like to think hard work guarantees success. We want straight lines and predictable results. 

But faith means planting anyway, even when we don’t get to choose which efforts endure. It means trusting that God has the longer view, knowing which seeds need to die and which should take root.

Sometimes God blesses the dream we thought was small. Sometimes God lets the big plan wither so something quieter, humbler, and more lasting can stand in its place.

The Beefwood is proof of that. I still don’t know why it survived. I still don’t understand or appreciate it. I never would’ve chosen it to make it. 

But God did. And I’m finally okay with that.

So the Beefwood stays. Still ugly. Still blocking the view. Still shunned by the birds.

It’s a survivor, and proof that God does some of the best work in the junkyard parts of life, turning what we’d toss aside into something that thrives.