All spruced up…

There’s a soft spot in my heart for those people who make anonymous gestures that the rest of us can see and appreciate. You know, like the person who puts a little red dot on the “deer crossing” signs, converting an average buck into Rudolph the Red-Nosed You-Know-What. I’m also fond of the people who are responsible for the guerilla Christmas trees. I’ve seen them along Loop 360 and down on Redbud Trail near Tom Miller Dam and they’re probably in some other spots around Austin, too. They’re ordinary cedar trees, growing wild by the road. But someone has decorated them with tinsel and ornaments. Sometimes it looks like a “drive-by” decorating job, as if the tinsel was thrown from a slow-moving car. But others have been carefully draped, with each ornament hung in just the right spot. There might be a dozen or more in one spot, forming their own holiday parade.
And it makes me happy. Seeing a Christmas tree with no agenda—no corporate sponsorship, no donor recognition plaque, not even a donation box—well, that just warms my heart. It’s a true example of doing something unselfishly, with no thought of reward...and it benefits many others.
I don’t want to get all Barbara Walters here, but if I were a tree, that’s the kind of tree I’d want to be: a tree that someone took time to dress up and beautify. Wouldn’t it be great if you were just another member of the crowd and someone stopped and gave you a beautiful gift, made you feel like royalty?
It would be great. It is great. Because, just as a lowly cedar tree—usually considered a parasitic scourge by landowners—can be transformed into a celebration symbol of the most important event in history, so can you. All it takes is the touch of a loving hand to change us into something poignant and inspirational. I’ve been touched like that; have you? I bear markings from the very first Christmas.
If we can do this for trees, I wonder if we could do it for people, too? Not for recognition, not for glory...but just to celebrate the birth of a King.