The Tiny Sequoia

Last week, here at Camp Wawona, we began our Spring edition of outdoor school, snow and all.  Sonya and I traded jobs--I got kitchen duty, and she got to be an instructor, and we were both pretty happy with the switch.  Without her permission, I am about to tell you a story that one of her fifth graders wrote when they had to make up their own legends.  I might have embellished, but this anonymous fifth grader definitely gets the credit for a very lovely story...

In an ancient mountain forest, there once lived a tiny Sequoia tree.  All the other trees in the forest towered majestically above him, stretching and waving their branches to the clouds.  The big trees made fun of the tiny Sequoia, and told him he would never be a special tree in the forest because he was so small.


Every night, in the sky above the ancient mountain forest, the stars came out to sing.  The trees loved to hear the stars sing.  But one night, one of the stars fell out of the sky and onto the forest floor.  The star looked desperately to the trees for help, but the tall trees turned away from her, disdainfully.


"Please, please, won't someone put me back in the sky?" asked the star.


"I will help you," said the tiny Sequoia.  He picked up the star, and stretched his branches toward the sky to place her back among the other stars.  And as he reached up, the other stars watched and blessed the little tree, so that he grew and grew and grew until his branches really did touch the sky.  The stars sang again, and the Sequoia heard them better than ever before.  The rest of the forest trees bowed their heads low, because the tiny Sequoia had become the Giant Sequoia--the largest tree in the forest.


"Your attitude should be the same that Christ Jesus had. Though he was God, he did not demand and cling to his rights as God.  He made himself nothing; he took the humble position of a slave and appeared in human form.  And in human form he obediently humbled himself even further by dying a criminal's death on a cross.  Because of this God raised him up to the heights of heaven and gave him a name that is above every other name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father."  Phil. 2:5-11 (NLT)