The Highest Leaf

“I said to the almond tree, ‘Sister, speak to me of God,’ and the almond tree blossomed.” Greco

As Jesus entered Capernaum, a centurion approached him with this request: “Sir, my serving boy is at home in bed paralyzed, suffering painfully.”  Why didn’t he request a private audience with Jesus to accentuate his status among the public and other Roman militia?   He said to him, “I will come and cure him.”  “Sir,” the centurion said in reply, “I am not worthy to have you under my roof.  Just give an order and my boy will get better.  I am a man under authority myself and I have troops assigned to me.  If I give one man the order, ‘Dismissed,’ off he goes….  Why would the centurion place himself under the authority of a man beneath his social rank?  Why would he blindly trust Jesus to heal? Why didn’t Jesus embellish himself in stature before his followers to enhance his position?  Jesus showed amazement on hearing this and remarked to his followers, “I assure you, I have never found this much faith in Israel….”  To the centurion, Jesus said, “Go home.  It shall be done because you trusted.”  That very moment the boy got better.  (Matthew 8:5-10,13) Why didn’t the centurion or others for that matter ask for proof that Jesus was good to his word to heal?  How significant was this event that the centurion did not ask for more? 

The request we share before the Eucharist, “Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed,” directs me to seek the faith of the centurion.  Often, I revisit a father, his son, and a tree.

Years ago, to celebrate our anniversary, I surprised my wife with a hot-air balloon ride.  With the sun just peeking over the horizon, we met our pilot at our launch site.  We discovered two additional balloons would launch and follow the same jet stream during this rather calm morning.  Like that of an enormous sleeping bag, we unrolled our soon-to-be airborne vessel.  We unfolded it for inflation.  Adjacent to our balloon, a high school teen knelt while his dad draped the balloon fabric over his knee.  I watched the boy cup the colors in his palms and massage his cheeks in the silks.  It became apparent to me; the boy was blind.  His father escorted him along the unfurled edge, not to step on the exposed cloth. 

I did not ask, though curious, as to why a blind individual might desire a balloon ride.  Little time passed before inflated rainbows rose above recently harvested fields.  The father assisted his son into the basket as their pilot delivered instructions on where to stand to avoid the burners.  More than a hundred fifty feet in the air and rising, we entered a slow-moving air stream flowing over the calm below.  Oaks, elms, sycamores, and hickories blanketed the Missouri landscape occasionally opening to small developments below.  Keeping us aloft, blow torches interrupted an unexpected silence. 

As if reading my mind, our pilot shared the mission challenging the pilot guiding the adjacent balloon carrying the blind teen and his father.  “As we head out over the forests, their pilot will seek the tallest tree in our flight path.  He’ll gradually lower his balloon so that the boy may pick the highest leaf from the tallest tree.” Among us all, one could not mistake the tallest tree!  Thriving upon a ridgeline in the distance, broad outstretched branches, white mottled with gray and brown peeling bark, an American sycamore towered above oaks and hickories. 

We learned the teen lost his sight to a disease, having had sight as a child.  Why would the father take his son on a hot air balloon ride?  Why would the son ask for such an experience?  Even though they traveled on a balloon, why would the son trust his father?  The father could deceive his son and take him to the most convenient tree to pick the most convenient leaf rather than the tallest leaf from the tallest tree especially given the fact; the balloon pilot actually has very limited control of where he can navigate.  Did the son know what he was asking?  And if so, why would he request a nearly impossible task?  Did the father appreciate the challenge he’d given to the pilot? I watched with elevated interest, not to rush the event, to take it all in.   

Despite my attempts to suspend time, the moment arrived.  Beginning far from the ridge, the pilot allowed gases to cool such that the balloon descended much lower than the treetops.  As they slowly approached, the pilot strategically directed the blow torches.  The basket ascended gradually in silence. The pilot intently made gentle alignments with the sycamore.  Silence.  The father embraced his son from behind.  He nestled his chin into his son’s neck.  The balloon drifted splitting a high fork.  Branches scraped the basket.  As if straining water over a boat’s edge, the son stretched, extending his fingers into an ocean of leaves. “Now!” the father commanded.  His son wrapped his fingers around a leaf picking it from the sycamore.  

“I have it!” Sheer joy proclaimed.  Elated, the teen waved the highest leaf and pressed it to his cheek.  His father wrapped his arms around his son.

Our pilot recorded 140 feet.  I roughly estimated a water column’s pressure to that height to be nearly twice the pressure in a typical car tire.  In wonder, I marveled how the tree supplied water to the cells at the extreme tip of that leaf?       

Perhaps the balloon ride was the son’s gift to his father; to pause and glimpse the Kingdom’s vast beauty in creation.  Perhaps the father trusted his vision in God through the pilot and nature so that he might fulfill his son’s request.  Maybe the son already knew what I discovered; the miracle of supporting life to the highest leaf.  The son trusted his father to take him to infinity to grasp it.

Their pilot and I gazed back upon the sycamore.  We knew we’d traveled through sacred space!