WEDDED
TREES

Topics: Christmas; Church; Community; Friendship; Marriage; Spiritual Gifts; Teamwork; Unity

References: Proverbs 27:17; Ecclesiastes 4:9–11; Mark 10:6–9; Romans 12:3–8; 1 Corinthians 1:10; 12; Ephesians 4:11–16

Slats Grobnik, who sold Christmas trees, noticed one couple on the hunt for a Christmas tree. The guy was skinny with a big Adam’s apple, and she was kind of pretty. Both wore clothes from the bottom of the bin of the Salvation Army store.

After bypassing trees that were too expensive, they found a Scotch pine that was OK on one side but pretty bare on the other. Then they picked up another tree that was not much better—full on one side, scraggly on the other. She whispered something, and he asked if $3 would be OK. Slats figured both trees wouldn’t sell, so he agreed.

A few days later Slats was walking down the street and saw a beautiful tree in the couple’s apartment. It was thick and well rounded. He knocked on their door, and they told him how they had pushed the two trees together where the branches were thin. Then they tied the trunks together. The branches overlapped and formed a tree so thick you couldn’t see the wire. Slats described it as “a tiny forest of its own.”

“So that’s the secret,” Slats asserts. “You take two trees that aren’t perfect, that have flaws, that might even be homely, that maybe nobody else would want. If you put them together just right, you can come up with something really beautiful.”

—Mike Royko, One More Time (University of Chicago Press, 1999)