A New Thing

I see this tree almost everyday. It lives a few doors down the street from my house. Over the past several years, it has been battered and broken by many storms. In fact, after each damaging storm, tree trimmers have come and done their work to save the tree. The result has been that the three main upward reaching trunks of the tree have been shortened. This towering tree has grown shorter through the storms.

But this Spring I noticed something. Out of the surgical repairs to the three trunks has come new growth, each one growing in a rounded shape as if it were a separate tree. The result is a totally new look for this faithful old tree. It looks like three scoops of ice cream atop some huge waffle cone. Or perhaps they bring to mind the looming towers of some massive church sanctuary. The tree has come back strong; it has come back different, but beautiful still.

The prophet Isaiah writes, “See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.” We sometimes seem to have trouble with “new things”. As much as we would like to move on from frustration, disappointment or pain, we don’t want anything to change or to look different. We fear that just because something looks different that it is somehow less. We can find ourselves living out of a place where we think change is necessarily a negative thing. When that happens, we are unable to see the beauty in what is emerging in our life and world. When that happens, we are unable to perceive the new thing God is doing. We wander lost in our wilderness because we cannot embrace the new trail. We die of thirst because we would rather have the old familiar stream of water instead of the new.

Different might be just what we need. Change might be the answer to our struggle. The new might just be a gift from God.

Peace.