Daily Lesson for April 1, 2016

"Blessed is the one

    who does not walk in step with the wicked

or stand in the way that sinners take

    or sit in the company of mockers,

2 but whose delight is in the law of the Lord,

    and who meditates on his law day and night.

3 That person is like a tree planted by streams of water,

    which yields its fruit in season

and whose leaf does not wither—

    whatever they do prospers."

-- Psalm 1

On Tuesday I went to be with with my friend and fellow Second Ber David Weaver and wonderful team at the South Plains Food Bank as they were celebrating the grand opening of the new J.T. and Margaret Talkington Distribution Center. What an incredibly beautiful -- and big! - place.  Generations of lives will be better with help from this new building.

Before the official building dedication, I toured the 69,000 square foot facility, and my tour guide was another Second Ber Howard Mercer.  Howard, a WWII veteran, is still at it after 20 plus years of post-retirement volunteering for the Food Bank. Today he is giving tours; but he's done everything from stock shelves and pack food sacks to serve on the board and raise money. 

As we move towards the back of the new facility Howard takes our group on a slight detour towards a window in the back which looks East. Through the glass we can see row upon of Apple trees. This is the Food Bank orchard and there are 1,200 trees out there Howard tells us.  "I know because I planted them," he says with a laugh.

Howard tells our group that when he retired he wanted to do something to help the Food Bank, so he helped get up enough money from places like his Rotary Club to make the purchase on the trees for the orchard. He says he and another retired man named George Elle were working on it together and George told Howard, "If you can raise the money to buy the trees then we'll plant them."

"Now," Howard told us, "when George said, 'we' I didn't know he meant him and me.  But sure enough, that's who he meant."  So with Howard 65-years-old and George at 79, the two went to planting trees-- one by one, in 100 plus degree weather, all 1,200 of them. Howard goes on with the story: "I told my wife Emma Lou, 'He's going to kill me. He's literally going to kill me.' But I lived. And we only lost one tree."  

The group looks out the window onto the orchard. The trees have been there for 20 plus years now, their apples helping to feed no telling how many hundreds of thousands of people.

After we conclude our tour, we went back to the front lobby for the ribbon cutting ceremony. In David's speech he is moved to tears as he begins to talk about all the people who helped to make the Food Bank what it is today. He invokes language we often use at church when referring to those who have gone before us -- "saints, past and present."

As David is speaking certain names come to mind.  I think of my Aunt Anita who was one of the original founding board members the South Plains Food Bank.  I think of Doug Carlson, another board member, who showed up to volunteer five days a week.  When he passed, they named the volunteer of the year award the "Doug Carlson Award" after him. I thought of Bill Kingsbery, another Greatest Generation man whose hospital bed I had just been in that morning.  As a businessman and generous philanthropist, his generosity helped start the Food Bank; and it was his wife Mary Louise's family who gave the land where the orchard and new building now stand. 

And thinking on the land got me to thinking again of George and Howard and something David told me Howard once said while reflecting on the meaning of the planting of those Apple trees.  "Each of us," Howard said, "ought to plant trees under whose shade another generation will sit."

There is an old adage, "You can count the seeds in the apple, but you can never count the apples in a seed."  It makes me wonder, how many apples are in the seeds of 1,200 trees?  And what about now in 69,000 square feet of seeds? And what about in me?

George, Doug, Anita and Mary Louise are now gone; they've moved from saints present to saints past.  The rest of the Greatest Generation will one day join them.  But they've planted their orchard.  And it's under the shade of their trees that we sit and celebrate today, until tomorrow we go out and plant our own.