The Threefold Cord

Though one may be overpowered by another, two can withstand him. And a threefold cord is not quickly broken.  Ecclesiastes 4:12

If there's one thing that will humble you, it's when you realize that you can't do everything yourself.  We, as humans, need each other.  In the book of Ecclesiastes, there is a lot of wisdom being given.  In the verses preceding this one, the Preacher (King Solomon) is telling us that two is better than one, for if one falls, the other can pick him up.  If two lie down together, they can keep each other warm.  If one tries to overpower you, it is good to have someone to help you.

Then he switches to something better than one or two.  Three.  A threefold cord is not easily broken, Scripture tells us.  The threefold cord is often talked about in marriage, with God, the groom and the bride as the three cords braided together.  The thought being if you keep God at the center of your marriage, His love will bind you together.  There is strength in this.  

I am very much a visual person.  Sometimes illustrations are the best way for me to understand Biblical truth.  Take the cassia tree.  We have two of them near our back patio.  Beautiful trees!  In the fall, they fill with yellow flowers that illuminate the backyard with brightness and cheer.  There is a downside to the cassia tree, however.  Their root system is shallow and weak.  They blow over easily.  I have t posts driven in the ground to hold them upright.

Each year, the freeze kills them, but they come up from the base of the plant and we cut off the dead top.  This year we tried a new trick.  As all the shoots came up from the bottom, we only allowed three to survive.  We kept cutting off the additional suckers.  As the three shoots grew, we braided them together.  You can see the effect of that below:

The tree shoots braided together eventually grew together, making spindly trunks stronger than if they were by themselves.  Although the freeze this year zapped the cassia, the winds did not topple the tree.  The strength of three steadied the tree.  Any singular trunk would have fallen as in past years.

This afternoon, I used a sawzall with a pruning blade to cut the three braided trunks of the cassia back to the base of the tree.  I can see new green growth about to come up from the base of the trunk.  I want to clear out the old, dead growth to make way for the new.

As the cassia grows out this spring, we'll repeat the braiding of the three.  As we learned by watching the cassia, a threefold cord is not easily broken.  If you look around, there are biblical truths being conveyed all around us.

The Cassia Tree

Saturday morning was crisp and cool.  The sunshine was brilliant.  The skies bluer than a blue bird.  It felt good to be alive!  A gentle breeze blew as I walked to the barn in my bathrobe with my coffee in hand and opened the nesting boxes so the hens could lay their eggs.  The animals don't care that I'm not properly dressed.  

As I hurried back inside where my wife was busy preparing scrambled eggs with sautéed mushrooms and onions, I glanced out and saw the cassia tree putting on a show.

Each fall the tree blooms and the yellow flowers are brighter than the sun.  The flowers are so bright, you almost need sunglasses to look at the tree.  The flowers fall from the tree and create a carpet of yellow petals on the patio.

Here is a photo of the yellow blooms that cover the tree:

And an even closer photograph.  You can see unopened blooms that will soon yield even more yellow blossoms!

While the tree is certainly beautiful with its happy, cheerful flowers, like any good thing, there are some drawbacks.  This tree will freeze back in the winter.  You'll think the thing is dead, but in the spring, it sprouts back up from the bottom.  This past year it didn't freeze but one time and the tree kept growing and growing.  

The major downside with the cassia is its root system.  The Lord did not bless this tree with a good, sturdy root system that anchors it.  During any thunderstorm or certainly hurricane, the cassia will fall over on its side.  To remedy this, I positioned three t-posts around the tree and wove rope around the t-posts to support the cassia to keep it from falling.  For the most part this has worked.  The cassia has many trunks.  At our local nursery, Tricia got a good idea.  The owner of the business braided the trunks as it grew into one main trunk.  It seemed to make a stronger, better looking tree.  If ours freezes this winter, I will certainly try this!