I sat in the pew listening to this minister that I had heard many times before, speak on a subject I had heard before. My mind had began to drift away.

Have you ever had that small thought in your mind that says I know where this is going. It is about this time my mind started to tune out and day dream. Just when I had made up my mind to tune out this minister struck a familiar note. He did something that I had been trained to do in preparing a speech, he gave his message a frame of reference, one that I could relate to.

You see the sermon was called “Bounce Back Ability”,the ability to come back after facing a problem. I had heard this sermon before and thought I understood all of it’s principles.

But then the minister started talking about a tree in his backyard. It was a Crepe Myrtle tree. He talked about how a strong rain had come and pounded this little tree he had planted. The rain had not only up rooted it,but almost washed it a way. He thought to himself, that it would not live after such harsh treatment and being so young,but he stuck it back in the ground anyway,thinking it would not live.

He told one of his neighbors about the little Crepe Myrtle tree and that he thought it wouldn’t make it a couple of days later. The neighbor looked at him and laughed and said “it will make it, it’s a Crepe Myrtle”.

He didn’t know why the neighbor was so confident that the tree would make it. But as the tree grew his saw that it required less watering , that it could withstand the strongest winds. He notices how the tree would bend in the strong winds and then go back to it’s regular position, and how even with little or no water it bloomed every year. Not just bloomed,but gave beautiful blooms year after year.

He came to understand the smile on his neighbors face when he said the tree was a crepe Myrtle.

I bought a crepe Myrtle and planted it in my yard after I heard this sermon. It was a scroungy little bush planted in the wrong season almost winter. I have watched it now for over fifteenth years. It has grown tall. I have done very little for this tree other than look at it from time to time and think about the sermon.

We are all facing some hard times ahead, it is time for us to be like the Crepe Myrtle, the word is resilient.it’s time for us to be resilient.