The Oldest Living Patient

The Methuselah tree does not rush.

Tucked in the White Mountains of eastern California, this Great Basin bristlecone pine has been alive for nearly 5,000 years — older than the Egyptian pyramids, older than the alphabet, older than any nation on earth. Dendrochronologist Edmund Schulman of the University of Arizona dated the tree in 1957 by counting its growth rings and published his astonishing findings in National Geographic. Its exact location is still kept secret by the Inyo National Forest to protect it from visitors.

What strikes researchers most is how slowly it grows. In the thin, rocky soil at 10,000 feet of elevation — battered by wind, frost, and drought — the tree may add only a fraction of an inch each year. But scientists have discovered something unexpected: that slow, hard growth produces wood of extraordinary density and resin content, making it nearly impervious to disease, insects, and decay. The harsh conditions are not hindering the tree. They are forming it.

James wrote that the testing of our faith produces hupomone — patient endurance (James 1:3). The Almighty does not seem to be in a hurry. He measured out five millennia for a single pine tree in the California highlands. The difficult seasons you are walking through right now — the waiting, the uncertainty, the growth so slow you cannot see it — may be the very conditions producing in you something that will outlast nearly everything around you.

If God can work patiently for 5,000 years in a single tree, He can be trusted to work patiently in you.