Book Review #11 – “The Cookie Tree” by Jay Williams

Book Review #11 – “The Cookie Tree” by Jay Williams; published in 1967 by Parents Magazine Press.

“The Village of Owlgate was quiet and tidy, and nothing surprising ever happened there. Everything had a place, and everything was in its place. Everybody knew why things happened and everything happened just as it was supposed to. Nothing surprising ever happened, because nothing surprising was allowed to happen. ‘That way,’ said the people of Owlgate with satisfaction, ‘you always know where you are.’”

Overview of Story. This children’s story that will inspire adults starts with the excerpt above. Then the story continues with the magical appearance of a tree laden with chocolate cookies, smack dab in the middle of the town square of what appears to be a walled medieval village. The children were the first to notice it, and the first to appreciate it for what it was: a present from a friendly magician. The adults, however, with limited faith and stunted imaginations, were doubters from the start, because this tree didn’t fit into their perception of reality. Some laughed in derision, some fretted over its edibility, some shook with fear, believing it to be a dark warning of impending disaster. The mayor claimed the tree wasn’t really there, because no mention of it was made in the Town Records. It was unexpected, it was unlikely, it was out of their control, and so they didn’t allow it to exist. During all this hubbub, the children were encircling the tree, enraptured with the silver bark, the sun-drenched leaves, and the glossy brown cookies.

While the village people were saying things like, “It’s witchcraft, cut it down,” and “I don’t believe in it, therefore I will not discuss it,” and argument followed argument, the children were shaking the tree, rattling the cookies down to the cobblestones, and joyously stuffing the cookies into their appreciative little mouths. And before the mayor could fulfill his plan of felling the tree before it hurt anyone, the tree quietly folded up smaller and smaller until it disappeared. The closing line is, “Somewhere, a magician smiled with satisfaction.”

Why do I go to this length to describe a children’s story? Because one of the greatest dangers facing any individual Christian (or Christian institution) is that s/he evolves into a village of Owlgate, where the unpredictable Person of Jesus and the surprising mystery of grace is somehow neatly packaged, wrapped in a plain box, and placed on a dusty shelf where it won’t throw anyone off balance. While a church’s fearful and unimaginative adults are arguing over likely formulas for spiritual success, the child-like are gazing at the wonderful gift of Jesus, surprised and thrilled, tasting of His goodness. While some are leaving nothing to chance (divine or otherwise), closed to sacred whimsy and holy surprise, others are open to new truths, to the Lord whose mercies are new every morning.

Maybe one of the chief qualities of being child-like is being open to aspects of the truth that come from unlikely sources, open to surprises in the Faith. Maybe we miss out on important ingredients in discipleship when we close ourselves off from unlikely influences that put “ants in the pants of faith,” as Frederick Buechner once said. Do we spend too much time searching for likely suspects, for fool-proof recipes for a victorious life? Are we sometimes too intentional? Is our God becoming predictable in our faith? Wouldn’t a life with an amazing God be more adventuresome, more stimulating, if we were open to surprise, accepting the fact that this God was outside of our control? When dealing with fathomless mysteries like the Trinity and the deep truths of Scripture, it seems wise to open a window in our imagination and let in some fresh air, as long as one remains consistent with the orthodox Faith. We Christians are too often smug in the faith, content in our ignorance, missing out on the adventure, and we shut down the Spirit’s whimsy before unlikely, holy surprise can put a fresh breeze into the room. In this way, Chesterton’s famous quip is much more believable… “He who has the Faith has the fun!”

Random Thoughts on the Virtues of Surprise. Yes, life is inevitably full of surprises, and many of those unexpected events are not welcomed in the least. But, there are many ways in which the Christian Church is one big Surprise Party in which believers learn to celebrate God’s presence, His unexpected blessings, triumphs, and everyday miracles. So on the one hand we should not be surprised as we ready ourselves for the Lord’s return. And on the other hand, we should be surprised as we experience one unexpected blessing after another before He comes like a thief in the night.

(1.) Welcoming Surprise while Exploring God. The adventuresome spirit of the believer in God demands that we expect the unexpected. Seeking God and following Him is basically exploring God as the Final Frontier. The Lord is the greatest Wonder of the World, and believers are adventurers, intensely curious about the nature of God’s being. Adventurers are always open to surprises in the hunt to know more about God. The thrill of discovery implies the pleasure of surprise, and it requires one step at a time into a safe unknown. The Person of God is in many ways uncharted territory, eternal and unfathomable, so there is always more to be discovered about God around every corner. The holy adventure is a lifelong quest filled with surprises, exploring and discovering with the vision of C. S. Lewis in his Narnia tales, “Further Up and Further In!”

(2.) Welcoming Surprise by Embracing Interruptions. It’s easy to forget that Jesus had a Ministry of Interruptions. Most of His miracles seem to have been done during His countless interruptions as He went from one place to another. One NT scholar estimated that there were as many as 35 interruptions in the first three chapters in the Gospel of Mark alone! It turns out that Christ’s agenda was to be interrupted! His to-do list was to be constantly detoured, and whatever rhythm His life had was constantly being redirected. Perhaps the interruptions Jesus welcomed were actually the main point of His ministry. All those seemingly random detours in His ministry were embraced by Jesus as heaven-sent sacred moments, and not a nuisance, and of course were not random in the least. These gospel interruptions were kairos moments, opportunities that presented themselves to Him in the fullness of time. Interruptions were accepted as timely moments for the Lord to demonstrate His compassion, mercy, patience, and grace. With Christ, He didn’t worry about whatever project He was working on. Mere efficiency of His time wasn’t even close to a concern of His. “The great thing, if one can, is to stop regarding all the unpleasant things as interruptions of one’s ‘own’, or ‘real’ life. The truth is of course that what one calls the interruptions are precisely one’s real life – the life God is sending one day by day: what one calls one’s ‘real life’ is a phantom of one’s own imagination.” (The Letters of C.S. Lewis).

(3.) Welcoming Surprise by Learning from Unlikely Sources. We are easily tempted, whether because of our arrogance or our fear, to limit ourselves to listening to those voices we have already accepted as worth listening to. The problem is that, by doing so, we remain closed to unexpected sources of wisdom and courage and comfort. When it comes to learning the truth, the child-like remain open to learning whatever they can from wherever then can. “If you listen carefully you can hear the truth from the unlikeliest sources, especially from the unlikeliest sources, from an enemy, from a stranger, from children, from nuts, from overheard conversations, from stupid preachers… Are not great discoveries also made at the unlikeliest moments?” (Walker Percy, The Second Coming, p.181).

(4.) Welcoming Surprise by Being Amazed. “I did not ask You, Lord, for success; I asked for wonder. And You gave it to me… Life without wonder – radical amazement – is not worth living. It is the beginning of our happiness. Our goal should be to live life in radical amazement… get up in the morning and look at the world in a way that takes nothing for granted. Everything is phenomenal; everything is incredible. Never treat life casually. To be spiritual is to be amazed.” (Abraham Joshua Heschel). Jesus Christ engaged in a ministry of amazement, surprise, astonishment, wonder. Everywhere He traveled, He left people astounded, in awe, with one surprise after another. He caused an unexpectedly big stir wherever he went, and people left in His wake were amazed at who He was and what He was able to do, whether from His unusually wise teaching, His authoritative exorcisms, His unprecedented healings, His clever and insightful conversations, His dramatic miracles. It seemed everyone marveled at Jesus, despite His best efforts sometimes to be off the radar. There are four Greek synonyms that mean complete astonishment or radical amazement: xenizo, ekplesso, thaumazo, and existemi:

• SURPRISED: “xenizo”; an interesting word that combines the idea of welcoming a stranger with being surprised at the strangeness of something. The idea here seems to be… to be open to surprises is the same as receiving an unexpected visitor, and to welcome a surprise is akin to embracing a guest in one’s life. “You are bringing some strange and surprising (xenizo) ideas to our ears, and we would like to know what they mean.” (Acts 17:20).
• ASTONISHED: “ekplesso”; a strong Greek word for astonished; amazed; dumfounded; awestruck; overwhelmed at something extraordinary; struck out of one’s senses; takes your breath away, even to the point of panic. There were at least fifteen gospel events in which the Greek superlative “ekplesso” was used to communicate a radical amazement, astonishment, wonder at Jesus. Jesus was met with overwhelming astonishment after His Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 7:28); by His hometown friends as they rejected Him (Matt. 13:54); after His teaching on the inadequacy of wealth (Matt. 19:25); after His conversation with the Sadducees about heaven and the resurrection (Matt. 22:33); at His synagogue exorcism (Mark 1:22, 27); after His healing of the deaf and mute man (Mark 7:37); after He whipped the moneychangers in the Temple (Mark 11:18); at His brilliant level of understanding with the rabbis at just 12 years of age (Luke 2:48); after casting out a demon with just a word (Luke 4:32, 36); at the exorcism of a demon-possessed boy (Luke 9:43). “And the people were astonished (“ekplesso”) beyond measure, saying, ‘Everything He does is beautiful (“kalos”), and is done with excellence!” (Mark 7:37).
• MARVELED: “thaumazo”; another strong Greek word that means… marveled at, astonished by; amazed at; filled with wonder to the point of being bewildered; being awestruck in admiration. There were forty-four passages in the gospels in which people were greatly amazed by Jesus, astonished to the point of awed by Him. Included in the group of people who were completely amazed, “thaumazo’d” by Christ: the shepherds, Mary and Joesph, the disciples, the Pharisees, various crowds during His ministry, and even Pilate himself was astonished by Jesus and marveled at Him. People were amazed by everything from the angelic baby announcement, to various prophecies in Jesus’ young life, to the calming of the storm and the withering of the fig tree;  from His miraculous exorcisms and healings to His teachings that always were on point and what were needed at the time. “And behold, a man from the crowd shouted out, ‘Master, I beg you to look at my son, for he is my only child! A spirit seizes him and suddenly he screams out and it convulses him so that he foams at the mouth! It mauls him and will scarcely leave him!’ Jesus answered, ‘Bring your son here to me.’ And even while the boy was coming, the demon threw him down to the ground and completely convulsed him. But Jesus severely rebuked the unclean spirit and healed the child, and then restored the boy to his father. And all were completely astounded (“ekplesso”) at the evidence of God’s mighty power, His majesty and His magnificence. While they were all marveling (“thaumazo”) at everything Jesus was doing…” (Luke 9:38-43).
• FLABBERGASTED: “existemi”; an extreme word that means to be out of one’s mind with amazement; crazy with wonderment; a stunned astonishment so strong that one is beside oneself; to be overwhelmed so as to be bowled over; literally, to remove from a standing position. This word is used seventeen times in the gospels, including when Jesus healed and forgave the paralyzed man dropped through the ceiling of Peter’s house; when Jesus raised a young girl from the dead; when Jesus calmed the storm and casually climbed into the boat with His disciples; on the road to Emmaus when the disciples heard about the empty tomb from the women. Existemi is also used when the family of Jesus thought He was crazy, going out of His mind. “Then a blind and mute man under the power of a demon was brought to Jesus and He healed him, so that the blind and mute man both spoke and saw. And all the crowds of people were overwhelmed with astonishment, stunned with amazement and practically out of their minds with wonder (“existemi”), and said, ‘This cannot be the Son of David, the Messiah, can it?” (Matt. 12:22-23). 

 (5.) Welcoming Surprise by Growing in Fearlessness. It is human to be fearful, and the causes of our fears are countless, including the fear of the unknown. Certainly that particular fear ranks right up there with public speaking, snakes, spiders, heights, failure, and actually, success. We can add dementia, poverty, loneliness, and ill health to the list as we become elderly. And we could consider what our society is foisting upon us to fear, such as climate change, pandemics, terrorism, extreme weather, international conflict. And then when we add hunger, crime, and unemployment, we have a list of fears that seem insurmountable. But there are many of us who greatly fear the unknown, something we haven’t experienced before, is outside of our control, and thus means we don’t know what to expect. For many, the unknown is an unexpected danger or threat to us or our loved ones. There is one antidote to this fear of the unknown, and that lies in trading that fear for another… the fear of God. Trusting in our known God, trusting in His character of mercy and eternal love, can give us the confident strength to face whatever may come unexpectedly, fearfully into our lives. We all need to fear God instead of the unknown, to reverently trust our God of holy surprises instead of the world’s unholy surprises. We can trust that the God who knows us better than we know ourselves has our best interests at heart, even when a surprise comes to us completely out of left field.

(6.) Welcoming Surprise as One of Life’s Greatest Pleasures. G. K. Chesterton said it best in his classic book “Orthodoxy:” “True joy comes from the unexpected, the marvelous, the paradoxical nature of existence, rather than comfortable, predictable routine. Life without surprise is stagnant. By asking for pleasure, mankind has lost its chief pleasure, for the chief pleasure is surprise. For reality is a present, a great gift that we don’t deserve, and we need to receive it with wonder… the sudden, profound realization of how wonderful it is that things exist at all, rather than not existing. Modern life has resulted in a dull, predictable life that killed the sense of wonder. We need to make the world large by maintaining a sense of wonder, staying humble, seeing everyday facts as miracles. We must be made small and humble to feel surprise, so the truth is we can’t enjoy anything without humility.”

(7.) Welcoming Surprise in order to Sing a New Song. If we are fearful of everything unexpected, if we are resistant to everything new, then how will we ever be able to sing a “new song” for the Lord? When it comes to singing a new song to the eternal and almighty Lord, there will always be fresh material for a new composition, and it takes a trusting openness to holy surprise to make that happen. Every believer is on the endless quest to discover as much about the character and goodness of God as He is willing to reveal. There is always more to the Lord than we can understand or appreciate, so there is always something new to discover about Him and more to sing about. There will always be new ways to express our praises to God. It is a sacred calling for every believer to invite surprise into their faith experience, because our awesome God is a God of surprises. “Then I saw the Lamb standing on Mount Zion… And I heard a sound from heaven like the roar of mighty ocean waves or the rolling of loud thunder. It was like the sound of many harpists playing together. This great choir sang a wonderful new song in front of the throne of God.” (Rev. 14:1-3).