What Snow Falling on Dead Trees Taught Me About Jesus

Posted on May 08, 2018 Topic : Inspirational/Devotional, Women's Christian Living
Posted by : Karen Stott

Our views are my favorite part of our property before we moved in—the only thing I wanted to change was seeing the side of our neighbor’s house, complete with red metal trailers, campers, half a dozen cars, and oodles of garbage cans.

I made it my mission to fix the eyesore in the most efficient and beautiful way. So I set my heart on trees, saved up, and bought a dozen cedar trees to line the fence. I was assured that red cedars would grow the fastest and provide the most blockage from the neighbors.

It was the most perfect plan. Until it wasn’t.

Shortly after the trees were planted, we got hit with torrential rain and insanely high winds. The trees couldn’t handle the impact, and many of them fell over. We put them back in place, staked them, and figured all would be well.

Over the next few months we watched them lose color, strength, and fullness. Until one day we looked up and were greeted with bare limbs and sparse bunches of orange needles.

I couldn’t bear to admit the defeat. I’d failed. I couldn’t even get trees to grow in the Christmas tree capital of the world. Removing them would require coming to terms with so many of my other failures and heartaches.

So I left them there. Dead. Barren. A vast display of ugliness and disappointment greeting me and my coffee every morning and causing my soul to grieve with frustration.

Every morning started this way. For nearly 400 mornings.

Until this one.

This morning I looked down upon my tree-lined fence and was met with the magic of heaven. Old made new. Dirty made clean. Ugly putting on the clothes of breathtaking beauty.

I stood awestruck. I stared harder and harder as I tried to make sense of it, looking with deep intensity trying to see a glimpse of the dead brown limbs under the white, sparkly blanket.

All I could see was snow. All I could see was this bright, white, shining wall of beauty. Glistening with freshness, and wonder, and a peaceful presence that was almost magical. Okay, let’s face it. It was completely magical.

My 12 dead trees weren’t even recognizable under the glory, and I instantly saw pieces of my own heart wrapped up in their branches. Why do I fight so hard to do everything on my own with a Savior who wants to wash me like snow and cover me in Himself ? Why do I insist on believing that I am forgotten? Looked over? And left behind? When I am clearly engulfed by the love of the King?

I bet if those trees could brush away enough snow from their imaginary tree eyes to look in the mirror, they wouldn’t even believe what they saw. The beauty on their own bodies. The majesty before them. Completely covering them. Even with the cold of the snow up against

their bark and the glory visibly on their frames, they might still feel the sting of ugliness and rejection of not being able to succeed at what they were created to do.

We all do this. Me especially. Countless times I have forgotten whose I was, and continued to walk down a path clothed in barren not-enough-ness instead of dressing in the fullness that comes with being clothed in Christ.

It feels almost impossible for me to see myself as anything but the small-town high school girl who barely graduated. Somewhere along the line, I started putting on clothes I was never meant to wear. They came in the form of failures, shades of shame, and believing other people’s whispers over God’s.

And before long, that’s how I identified myself.

Even worse, I was convinced that’s how everyone else identified me too.

I don’t know where you are today, friend. Or where your heart is, for that matter. But I do know that somewhere along the line, we’ve all believed something about ourselves that we were never meant to believe.

Give yourself the grace our Savior died for you to have. He didn’t die so that we could continue living in our bondage, holding on to our heartache and swallowing lies about ourselves that keep holding us back and shoving us down.

He died so that we could be free. And freedom doesn’t wear chains of what was. Freedom lifts off, flies high, and embraces all that He is.