The Chinese have a story about a carpenter and his apprentice resting in the shade of a huge, gnarled oak tree. ‘Do you know why this tree is so big and beautiful?’ the carpenter asked. The apprentice shook his head. ‘It’s because it’s useless. If it had been useful someone would have cut it down years ago. But because people thought it was useless it was able to grow to the magnificent tree it is now.’
Well. In a world that tends to judge people only for their economic value, there are many who feel that the world has judged them to be useless and that life has passed them by. But allowed to grow, as God intended them to grow, they become what the Bible says God’s people truly are, ‘Like trees planted by streams of water which yield their fruit in season and whose leaves do not wither.’