Well done, good and faithful servant!

Matthew 25:23 NIV

My first job as a journalist was working the night shift at a newspaper, so part of my job was to write obituaries. The reporter I was replacing gladly handed me the obit basket. He didn’t like writing obits and even created a standard template so you could fill in the blanks. I remember looking at the basket and flipping through the forms. Sure, they had basic information, but—call it the inquiring mind of a rookie reporter, or a nudge from God—I wanted to know more about each person’s story.

I asked the funeral directors to get at least one statement from the family that best described the deceased. Each obit I wrote started with that statement. I heard stories about how people’s faith had carried them through difficult times and seasons. Many of these faith stories were being told publicly for the first time by grieving family members. These stories shaped that person’s faith and impacted those left on earth to cherish their memory.

I heard a story about a boy who got up early each morning to work his family’s farmland before going to school. What I thought was dedication to chores went much deeper. The boy was my dad, but he wasn’t working in the fields as I had always thought. He was spending quiet time with God, sitting on his father’s tractor under a tulip tree.

My Dad was sixteen when his father died. Being the oldest child, he had to keep the fields going. Every day he would meet God and pray. He never shared that story with me or his siblings, but he did with Mom. Just months before she passed, she told me the story. Suddenly things began to make sense. Each morning before going to work, Dad would take a walk outside and stand under a tulip tree in our backyard. That tulip tree in our backyard began as a seedling from the tree at his old homeplace.

Through the years it grew into a towering tree. About two years after Dad passed away, a storm damaged the tree and it had to be cut down. I remember Mom being upset over that old tree. When she was telling me Dad’s story, I realized she wasn’t sad over losing the tree, but what it represented—a place to meet God. Find your tulip tree and watch your relationship with Jesus grow.

Mitzie Avera