Last fall, my neighbour decided to “prune” a tree in front of her house. It was tall and spreading, but when she was finished, it was small and stunted. I wanted to cry.
You see, I remembered the tree from the previous spring. In mid February it began to bloom. With a week or two, each branch was profusely covered with small deep pink blossoms, blooming so thickly that you couldn’t see any of the bark at all. It was such a beautiful sight, and my heart lifted each time I walked by.
Well, she hacked off about 2/3 of the tree, cut the branches up into short lengths, bundled them up and set them out for pick-up.
The tree bloomed again this year, but it was a pretty pitiful sight when compared to its former glory.
Walking by today, I saw a bit of pink amid the long grass in the open area across from the tree. It was a small bright pink blossom. I took a closer look and found that one branch had escaped the trash bin. Valiantly, it was trying to bloom. There were about a dozen blossoms in all, clustered towards the tips of the thin side branches.
I broke off each little branch that had a blossom or pink buds, and brought them home, put them in water and set them on the kitchen table.
Now, these should have been dead branches. They’d been lying in the grass for several months over the winter, without water or nourishment from the main tree. Yet, the blooms were still there.
Makes you think, doesn’t it?
Even when there is no hope for life, no possible reason to believe that something can be whole again, when all seems lost…life is still possible.
How much more so is that true for us. Regardless of how far we’ve moved away from God, how dark our life may be or how hopeless we may feel…God’s love is still there.
more quiet spaces 