“We are humans made of humus,” I told my nine year old grandson, Oliver. 

“What’s humus, Grandma?”

“It’s dirt. God made us from dirt. This reality, Oliver–remembering our humus beginnings–is one of the most important reckonings for us,”  “The Bible says God remembers that we are dust. When we remember this, we keep our hearts humble and humble hearts are soft. And soft hearts trust Jesus.”

Ashes to Ashes. Dust to Dust.

Two days later, I was standing in fresh snow at the graveside of my sister. We don’t yet know for sure what took Janie’s beautiful life after just 53 years. We’ve been told we have to wait for the death certificate to show up. This is hard for me. I want to know what stole my sister too early. What stole her from her husband and her family and from my siblings and our families and from our mom.

I’m standing near the foot of the coffin after the two casket-deliverymen set it on the platform and started to lower it till it paused like a flag at half-staff toward its final resting place. A pause. The lid, slightly below ground level, halfway to the basement. Maybe no more than a minute. In sixty seconds we dropped our tokens of love on the casket. Carnations and roses and daisies–cut from their life source–to bring a bit of beauty to our bleak gray day. 

For the first time ever, I saw into the hole below the casket. Behind gnarly roots—roots pointed toward the casket—I saw a background of dark brown humus. So many roots had been revealed by the unseen grave digger’s disruption of the earth.

The two men along with my nephews carried my sister’s boxed body to the shrouded hole. They set the casket on a platform which would lower her down like an elevator. In my heart, I swear I heard the screech and reverberation of a vault slam close as I watched the big man who came with an in-real-time–in our time of mourning–an unnamed man–bent-over-the-casket with his butt crack in our view. 

I kid you not. 

I cannot describe my emotion at the sight, but I turned away quickly with a prayer for help as we watched him straighten the casket that had fallen a bit off its support on one side. The man leveled the casket back into place and commenced cranking the elevator handle to lower my sister down.

Janie’s family had chosen this particular plot due to the fact that it was near a tiny birch tree. “My mom loved birch trees,” her daughter Vanessa told me. 

The coffin was Janie’s favorite color. The color of sky and river. She never told us her favorite color, but we made the call.  One of my siblings noted a few days before as we mounted her photos on remembrance boards, ”Janie favored blue.”  We saw blue in her clothing choices . . . in the photos of her in her swimming pool with her grandgirlies . . . and of her in her kayak on the lake . . . blue skies behind sunny smiles. 

Janie’s family warmed at the idea that her casket would be sheltered by the growing birch. 

And I remember the roots. I picture them slowly meandering, intertwining and winding their way around whatever they meet as they do their job of drinking in grace. The casket placed lovingly below the growing baby birch. And I remember the way things that go into the ground are never really dead but only broken to bring more life. 

Janie is not there. It’s only her unoccupied body. Her soul is with our marvelous Messiah.

And I remember this fact: the things in the earth and the things of the earth are all awaiting resurrection. 

In the case of the birch tree in winter, Miss Birch is awaiting growth toward Heaven and her new spring foliage. A gift given to give us summer shade. 

In Janie’s case, because she received Jesus as her Savior, the resurrection of her body comes when Jesus returns. (1 Thessalonians 4:16-17)

I was filling in my daughter with the details of our short time, graveside. It was—truly—all of five minutes. I told her how my downcast eyes beheld the inside of the broken ground. I described the tenacious roots that were revealed as the dirt had fallen away due to the unseen gravedigger. 

And we talked about the significance of trees. 

One forbidden tree was pleasing to the ego and the eye of Eve in a garden . . . which led to One being crucified on a tree on a hill . . . and one day we who believe in His love and gift of Salvation will be raised up. We will eat fruit together from the Tree of Life in the New Jerusalem (Revelation 22:2)

I shared with my daughter how I’d just seen my friend Portia randomly ask the exact question on Facebook that I had opened my Christmas message with in 2019: “If you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be?”

It was fun reading people’s answers (“I’d be a Palm, stately and in a warm climate.” … “I’d be a Willow, wispy and attractive.”)  And then I looked up the beginning of my message to read what I’d written:

THE GIFT OF HIS PRESENCE

If you were a tree, what kind would you be? Which tree would most resemble your husband, your mother, your children? Would you be a poplar, leaves flitting silver and white? Would they be blue spruce, short needles, all prickly? Or maybe a birch, slender, tall and papery white?

I decided that the tree that would best represent my husband would be an oak, sturdy, rugged, relentless. 

And if I were a tree, and you might be inclined to pick the same one, I’d be a maple. Beautiful in form and array, and . . . Of course, full of sweet sap. Although getting at it might be a touch painful … 

My ideal friend would definitely be the evergreen, fragrant, flexible and faithful.

Kayla said immediately she would be a pear tree or an apple tree. “I can see that,” I said, thinking of her five boys and all the young ladies she sows life into. Fruitful.

After our phone call ended, I got back to my morning Bible reading. There in Genesis 21, I read of Father Abraham digging a well in Gerar and making a covenant with the king, Abimelech. A covenant ensuring that the well he’d dug in Beersheba would belong to him. 

After he secured the well, he planted a tamarisk tree. (Genesis 21:33) “and there called on the name of the Lord, the everlasting God.”

It was after putting roots in the ground there at the well of the oath, in the hot desert land–Abraham planted a tree that would take 400 years to grow to full height. A tree whose sap would be turned into a sweet treat by insects transforming its juice.

It was near that tree God came to Abraham and asked him to sacrifice his only son, Isaac.  “Give me the one branch of your family Tree,” God said.

Hmm, Isaac was not Abraham’s only son. He’d had Ishmael 13 years prior to Isaac. 

But Ishmael was a result of the reasoning of humans made from humus, while Isaac was a child of the promise received by faith.  (Proverbs 3:5-6)

The two sons represent the two covenants:

1.  The old, broken-by-humans, striving-unsuccessfully covenant. 

And 

   2.  The new, kept-by-Jesus, trust-the-promise covenant. 

The “only” son of Abraham was the son of the promise. The first, Ishmael, was son of the flesh.

Just as Jesus, the only Son of the Father, is the Son of the Promise. The first, Adam, acted by his human reason.

As I wrote the following words in my journal: “The well . . . Beersheba (well of the oath) . . . the tamarisk tree planted as an emblem of faith in the promise . . . the worship . . . the test . . . the offering of the one son—a display of trust that the Promise of God  would never fail . . . (Hebrews 11:19)

Here by this well, by this Tamarisk Tree, is the BIRTH of God’s  Heavenly Family on earth–the sun, which had not broken through clouds at all for the first two weeks of walking through the valley of the shadow, suddenly landed on the words on my journal page. 

Right there, Light shone: “The birth of God’s Heavenly Family” 

. . . and then the sun left as quickly as it came . . . it left for the day, leaving me, again, in the valley of the shadow.

Look at this Promise . . . this . . . birth of the Family of God:

Genesis 22:15-18

15 The angel of the Lord called to Abraham from heaven a second time 16 and said, “I swear by myself, declares the Lord, that because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, 17 I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies, 18 and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed me.”

Abraham got his son back. And along with him, descendants as numerous as the stars. And, I weep as I write this. My sister Janie is one of these descendents. She had surrendered her life to Jesus, so I know she is with Him–forever free! I also note that whatever is surrendered to the Lord (As in Abraham with Isaac, and as Jacob with Benjamin.) we get back. And not only that, but promises of multiplication of descendants as our gift.

A Tree Of Hope . . . Planted In A Desert . . . For Future Shade For His Descendants . . . 

What is it about trees?

We find our story taking turns at the site of graves and trees. Eve took the bait of Satan, doubting God’s goodness, sharing her doubt with Adam, and forsook our peace with God. 

Jesus, a shoot coming from the stump of Jesse, took the curse caused by Satan and Adam and Eve on a dead tree. 

He became one with the cross-shaped dead tree through the wrath of man against God. And His was the first grave to release a man to Heaven. (Colossians 1:18)

When He went into the ground, He broke the chains of the grave! And now, we have access to The Tree of Life in the Garden of God.

And there at Oak Grove cemetery lies the body of my sister Janie, near the trunk of a little birch. 

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, her body returned to the earth. She’s entered her rest already, but her body will One Day rise again—dead bones will resurrect and her teeth will bite the fruit of the Tree of Life in the Heavenly Kingdom and she and I and all who’ve tasted Jesus and found Him to be good here will live forever there.  Never to be humus … or even human … ever again.