Oak Trees and Successful Environments (Sermon Illustration)

In America, we like to glorify the self-made man or woman.

We love a good rags-to-riches success story. Don’t we?

And while it’s true that much of their success comes from hard work, we often forget that nobody is ever successful all on their own.

There are always other factors involved.

In his book, Outliers: The Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell writes:

Biologists often talk about the “ecology” of an organism: the tallest oak in the forest is the tallest not just because it grew from the hardiest acorn; it is the tallest also because no other trees blocked its sunlight, the soil around it was deep and rich, no rabbit chewed through its bark as a sapling, and no lumberjack cut it down before it matured. We all know that successful people come from hardy seeds. But do we know enough about the sunlight that warmed them, the soil in which they put down the roots, and the rabbits and lumberjacks they were lucky enough to avoid?

Our lives are shaped a lot more by our environment—our beliefs, God’s provision, and the people we surround ourselves with—than most people want to admit.

With this perspective, it’s no wonder the Bible often warns us to surround ourselves with wise and godly people and to avoid the company of fools.

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Source: Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers: The Story of Success, Kindle ed. (Little, Brown and Company, 2008), 19.

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