A Tree in the Desert

Many years ago I was talking to an Abilene Christian University student and he told me that his grandfather planted a lot of the trees on the ACU campus.

I was impressed with that because Abilene, Texas is basically a desert. It's not as bad as the desert pictured above, but it's pretty dry for the most part. The trees the man's grandfather planted are fairly good sized trees now and a big improvement on the other option, no trees. Without people with foresight planting trees, there would be none of any size at all in this part of the world.

I've planted a lot of trees. Not all of them lived, but most of them did and some of them are getting fairly large now. I consider that making some kind of difference in my life and the lives of people that live here many years from now.

It was my way of making a difference.

There are many ways to make a difference and I don't necessarily recommend planting a tree and leaving it at that, but if that's all you can do then that is something.

Everybody should do something to make a difference in somebody else's life. I hope before I am done with this world, there are a ton of other things that I have done to help others.

I used to have a plan that I would do something each day to help somebody else out in need. A lot of times that meant jump starting a car. Or, carrying somebodies trash out for them. Or, helping somebody in any general way. How about letting somebody in when they are trying to enter a busy highway?

I am not placing a guilt trip on the one person that might actually read this, but what if we all went out of our way to help the people we run into every day.

What if our life time goal was to help as many people in need as we can?

What kind of a difference would that make in this world? Would it be a kinder, gentler world? Would people be less grouchy? Would we learn to love our fellow man and forget about the differences between us?

Let's give it a shot.

Abilene, Texas is not as bleak as Saudi Arabia but what if that man, or somebody else, had not planted a tree?