A tree was struck by a gale and fell on its face on the hard ground.
As it hit the damp earth with a crash—having never hit anything before, having only swayed softly in the breeze—it instinctively knew that it would never rise again.
The tree sobbed, from pain, sadness, rage, frustration. It saw the other trees still standing and cried. It lay for a long time among its broken branches, dormant, as if meditating on what to do with its colossal body.
Then it timidly sprouted some shoots. The shoots became twigs, which became branches, all reaching up towards the sky in an attempt to recover to some extent the aerial nature it had had before. It did what it could and allowed time to do the rest.
Soon it discovered a new purpose. Small children chose it to play “horsey” or pretended it was a castle; it became a favorite photo setting, a playground, a refuge. Hikers and squirrels alike used it to bridge the creek. And so, the tree found a new life, a happy life—albeit vastly different from what it had known before—and it realized that this was its destiny.
It has rained a lot since then, and the fallen tree is still lying on the ground, offering up its branches. Moss has covered the wounds from its fall. Over time it has become a beautiful and important element of the landscape, so much so that the builders took it into account when they designed the park.
From time to time the tree remembers and thinks, and it gives thanks for the day when fate vented its fury on it. Although it will never again be as it once was, or like the other trees, it is content, knowing that it has found its own place and role and that its future is in the Creator’s hands.
Could this perhaps also be our story? Though our lives don’t usually go as expected, the outcome may be a richer, deeper, more meaningful one as we let God use the storms as He sees fit.
God gets some of the greatest victories out of our seeming defeats.
Text adapted from Activated magazine. Image 1 by Michael_Browning from Freerange Stock. Image 2 courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
