New seedlings that sprang up under the White Cedar tree were destined for the mower blade. They were growing in the wrong place and their characteristics were wrong for the area.

So what if I could do something to give them a new life in a new place? Taking the thought seriously I went to a Bonsai class and the instructor assured me my tiny trees were perfect Bonsai subjects.

Full of enthusiasm, I collected them and put them in little pots. “You are all,” I told them, “destined for death by mower blade but I will give you life. If you will renew your thinking, you will live in a peaceful place, you will be different and you will tell everyone around you how you have been transformed.” They nodded in reply that it was a good deal (or perhaps it was just a passing breeze that swayed their heads.)

I transplanted them and for a full four years tended them diligently. And for a full four years they lived their new lives in their new environment instead of dead by mower blade.

Annoyingly, there was no evidence that their old natures had changed in any way whatsoever. They were nearly as tall as fence posts in their tiny pots and their patterns and habits remained exactly the same as in their old life. They were complete frauds and I knew because I could compare them with a true Bonsai. The true Bonsai had lived even longer, growing in a rock in the front garden. The seed had fallen into a small crack in the rock and it had changed its habits to grow as it should for the place where it had been planted.

As a true Bonsai, it was less than a handspan tall and was a genuine miniature. It had life instead of a destiny with destruction by mower blade because its whole nature had been transformed.

It was as though Paul himself had planted it there and had said, “You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires, to be made new in the attitude of your minds, and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.” Ephesians 4:22-24.

It’s the difference between the genuine and the fraud.

Elizabeth Price reprice@dragnet.com.au