Lessons Learned from a Struggling Tree

I was out for a walk today and I saw the strangest but most wonderful thing.  It was a tree that was cut because it had gotten in-between a fence and also was close to a power line. Instead of dying like most of the trees there  this tree refused to give up.  It continued to have limbs grow on it despite the fact that half of it had been cut down.  This tree really spoke to me about my life.   As a person that was often ignored in both my childhood and adult life it is very easy to give up and want to be just like the other trees that were in the area. Recently and in the past there have been opportunities that should of been mine but did not come to be.    But then I looked at the bark of the tree and noticed a heart that was engraved in the tree.  At one time I am sure maybe many years ago a couple had inscribed their love to one another.  Probably that couple did not exist today but I truly believe that was a physical sign to me that I need to be like that tree.  Even in the adversity of getting my branches cut I need to continue to bloom and do what I was created to do and that the difference between me and the other tree is my relationship with Christ.  No matter what happens around me and the adversity that this tree encounters being between a fence and near power

lines it continues to grow and bloom.  Hopefully I can learn from this and just do what I am supposed to do.  I see things other people don't see.  I talk to people that others don't see.  I encounter beauty others can't see.  I choose to be that tree today.  Instead of looking at the impossibilities I choose today to look for new roads ahead and see what God has planned for me.

 1Corinthians 2:9The Voice (VOICE)

⁹ But as the Scriptures say,

No eye has ever seen and no ear has ever heard
    and it has never occurred to the human heart
All the things God prepared for those who love Him.^[a]