I was out in our wooded acres checking on our maple tappings, and collecting firewood for cooking down the sap into syrup, and was reminded out there how lifeless and depressing people sometimes find this time of year.  Sure, they just look like dead trees, but if you look beyond appearances, God has put a lot of life and potential in those “dead” trees.

Tapping for maple syrup production can only happen this time of year from what looks like leafless and lifeless trees.  When tapping, you’re actually tapping into the early flow of the sap up the tree to the budding leaves—collecting what is literally the life-blood of the tree, bringing back new life for the Spring.  Other signs of new life are already showing (though unfortunately, the wild roses with all their thorns are among the first of the year to come back).

But even when trees are truly dead—or more dying than living—they are still sources of life.  Woodpeckers and other creatures feast on the bugs that love dead and dying trees, and the rotted out holes from broken branches make cozy homes for countless creatures as well.  They as the trees fall to the ground to return to their Maker, they end up creating a dynamic ecosystem that becomes the food source for plants, bugs and animals that become the foundation of the whole forest system food chain.

A powerful parable demonstrating that death not only provides the conditions for new life, but in many ways, is the actual source of new life.  So is it really the depressing scene of lifelessness that it at first appears to be, when all we seem to see is just dead trees, or is that death really the playground where New Life is playing hide and seek in so many ways and places?

In our lives, too, we often find ourselves in the Valley of the Shadow of Death, where things can seem hopeless, helpless and depressing.  Yet in God’s ecology, as Jesus said in His elegant simplicity, “unless the seed falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone, but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” (John 12: 24)

I so love Jesus’ phrase, “s/he who has eyes (or ears), let them see (or hear).”  I pray we all gain the eyes to see the often hidden gems of new life God is sowing all around us, especially in this season that seems to only offer dreariness.

– Pastor Jim