Dr. Gibbs 吉布斯医生（在线收听）

[00:03.33]Dr. Gibbs 吉布斯医生

[00:05.06]When I was growing up, I had an old neighbor named Dr. Gibbs.

[00:10.43]He was very nice, and never yelled at us for playing in his yard.

[00:14.36]When Dr. Gibbs wasn’t saving lives, he was planting trees.

[00:19.17]His house sat on ten acres, and his life’s goal was to make it a forest.

[00:24.64]He never watered his new trees, which flew in the face of conventional wisdom.

[00:29.56]Once I asked why. He said that watering plants spoiled them,

[00:34.18]and that if you water them, each successive tree generation will grow weaker and weaker.

[00:39.07]So you have to make things rough for them and weed out the weenie trees early on.

[00:43.90]He talked about how watering trees made for shallow roots,

[00:48.39]and how trees that weren’t watered had to grow deep roots in search of moisture.

[00:52.65]I took him to mean that deep roots were to be treasured.

[00:56.14]So he never watered his trees.

[00:58.67]He’d planted an oak and, instead of watering it every morning,

[01:01.72]he’d beat it with a rolled-up newspaper.

[01:03.81]Smack! Slap! Pow! I asked him why he did that,

[01:08.29]and he said it was to get the tree’s attention.

[01:10.68]Dr. Gibbs went to glory a couple of years after I left home.

[01:14.53]Every now and again, I walked by his house and looked at the trees

[01:18.35]that I’d watched him plant some twenty-five years ago.

[01:20.52]They’re granite strong now. Big and robust.

[01:24.04]I planted a couple of trees a few years back.

[01:27.53]Carried water to them for a solid summer. Sprayed them. Prayed over them. The whole nine yards.

[01:32.79]Two years of coddling has resulted in trees that expect to be waited on hand and foot.

[01:38.14]Whenever a cold wind blows in, they tremble and chatter their branches.

[01:42.74]Funny things about those trees of Dr. Gibbs’.

[01:45.92]Adversity and deprivation seemed to benefit them in ways comfort and ease never could.

[01:51.15]Every night before I go to bed, I pray for my two sons.

[01:55.22]Mostly I pray that their lives will be easy.

[01:58.16]But lately I’ve been thinking that it’s time to change my prayer.

[02:01.54]So I’m changing my prayer. Because life is tough, whether we want it to be or not.

[02:06.68]Too many times we pray for ease, but that’s a prayer seldom met.

[02:11.61]What we need to do is pray for roots that reach deep into life,

[02:15.78]so when the rains fall and the winds blow, we won’t be swept asunder.