Fallen Trees Make Good Bridges

 We read a lot of books about habitats in our house, including a book about trees, and all the animals that live in trees.  Cara is really into animals and where they live, so it was really fun when we were able to head to Colorado and up to the mountains to see all the things we read about in the books for ourselves.  (Seems like up next needs to be an ocean trip!) We were able to see forests, streams, foxes, deer, chipmunks and all kinds of other woodland creatures and habitats.  To see the forest up close on a short hike was really neat to see the "real thing" from the stories we read.  We looked at all the trees, packed tightly together, creating the illusion of painting more than reality.

We also came across fallen trees.  Huge trees that had been full of life and promise now laying on the forest floor.  Their roots ripping up the ground around them as they fell.  Sometimes it was clear, but often it was a mystery as to why they fell.

I think it’s often a mystery as to why trees in our own lives fall too.   Those tall fortresses of our plans or our work or our hopes that tower in our landscape, defining the view around us.  We’re left wondering why God allows something of strength and life to be toppled.  Or maybe it’s not really that life-full, but it’s roots grew deep and anchored the rest of smaller trees, and losing it upsets the balance of many smaller pieces. 

Sometimes God allows our most prized trees, our strongest growing plans, even things that seem to be bearing fruit, the parts that anchor and color our identity to tumble.  They don’t belong in God’s vision of our landscape.  Sometimes we can see why.  And sometimes it's a mystery.  

“Many are the plans in a person’s heart, but it is the LORD’s purpose that will prevail.”  Proverbs 19:21

In reality, fallen trees are difficult.  You can feel the ripping, the ground breaking from losing such an anchor, a landmark.  Suddenly your forest doesn’t look or feel the same.  Felling part of our hopes and plans that seemed to grow so tall with potential, changes the horizon of our identity and leaves us with a gaping hole where promise and life used to be, a void now filled with questions of what might have been.  It rips up our foundation, especially when the roots run deep.  Some of these pillars of our plans might have had a good long life, but still the view from the top, and their stability and strength, will be missed dearly.  Others seem to have fallen far too soon, long before they reached their full height.  

But if I’ve learned anything from reading so many forest books, it’s that fallen trees are important.  They make room to let more light in.  New beams stream into the emptiness, changing the cast of the other trees, catching fresh details that went unnoticed before and nourishing small seeds that might have otherwise been forgotten.  They clear the path for something new.  Perhaps stronger, healthier... perhaps just different. 

Fallen trees also provide homes for others.  Though the tree itself lives no longer, the fact that it is there provides shelter for many as they navigate their own way.  The strength that took years to grow provides life for someone else in need of a place to rest, telling a story of what once was, and in the telling, becoming something entirely new, a refuge.  

 

And of course, perhaps most importantly, fallen trees make good bridges.  They take you somewhere else, allowing you to cross what was before un-crossable.  Sometimes the footing is a bit tricky, and maybe you’re not sure if the spindly bridge will really hold all the weight of your past plans.  Still, they lift you up above the muck and allow you to travel to somewhere new.  Perhaps it’s not the view from the top of the tree in its height, but it’s a new view no less.  Because the tree fell, it creates a bridge  taking us to places we might not have been able to get to on our own, places where the footing would have been too treacherous or the path too hidden.

From death comes new life, new hope, new beginnings, new journeys.  A fallen tree bringing hope and life, and taking us somewhere we couldn’t have gotten on our own.  

Isn’t that the story of faith?