This week, I started reading, The Hidden Life of Trees, by Peter Wohlleben, and it’s safe to say that my mind is blown, my imagination re-ignited, and my hope in God’s good work in the world has been buoyed. In his book, Wohlleben writes that trees not only communicate, they create community. Just yesterday evening, I stood up from my reading spot on the living room couch to announce to whomever in my family would listen: Trees scream when they are thirsty!

My family is used to these kinds of enthusiastic whoa-filled announcements from me. This week it’s trees, but over the last few years, it’s been mind-blowing information about the social habits of elephants and the language of whales – all gleaned from Nat Geo documentaries that I’ve been obsessed with.

I’ve always been a curious person, and I’ve always loved learning new things, but this recent thirst for wonder and things outside of my world of understanding has felt more like desperation.

The last few years have been hard. I haven’t recovered well from the pandemic years — like some have seemed to subtly and not-so-subtly suggest I should have by now. But I’ve still been reeling from multiple fractures that left my wrist altered, broken community, a broken friendship, beyond-me-parenting challenges, and the weariness of our online lives and parenting in this reality. In the rise of new normals, and refreshing new takes, I’ve spent days still stuck in the remains of what fell apart – trying to gather the pieces I find and understand how and why.

The honest truth is that I’m still trying to make sense of it all, and in my effort, I find myself consistently gravitating toward a fork in the road. One path leads me ever deeper into bitterness, and the other leads me to the ministry of wonder.

I’ve held fast to these books and documentaries about the natural world because they urge me to become childlike again: openhearted and ready to receive. I am awed by God’s creation and the depths of it that are still unknown and somehow this not-knowing gives my heart and mind the rest it needs. When expert scientists write, “There’s still so much we don’t know,” I’m buoyed by the reminder of God’s vastness and the fact that God’s love matches that same enormity.

Like Job when he wrestles through bitterness and begins to distrust that God is good and cares about justice, I am pulled from my narrow view, my bitter heart, and reminded of how small my understanding is and how deeply loved I am in the midst of that. God is a poet — the original poet — and speaks to Job through poetry (which also blows my mind):

Where were you when I created the earth?
Tell me, since you know so much!
Who decided on its size? Certainly you’ll know that!
Who came up with the blueprints and measurements?
How was its foundation poured,
and who set the cornerstone,
While the morning stars sang in chorus
and all the angels shouted praise?
And who took charge of the ocean
when it gushed forth like a baby from the womb?
That was me! I wrapped it in soft clouds,
and tucked it in safely at night.
Then I made a playpen for it,
a strong playpen so it couldn’t run loose,
And said, ‘Stay here, this is your place.
Your wild tantrums are confined to this place.’
Job 38: 4-11 The Message

While it could almost seem like God is making little of Job’s cares and concerns, I find that re-focusing on how vast creation is reassures God’s care for all the details of every living thing. When I’m reminded that God tucked the ocean in with care, I’m reminded that I am held in that same care. When I think about the complexities and needs of trees – that they age, compete for space, care for each other, share resources, thirst, speak, and reach for light — or of the stars being made to sing, or the intentional measurements of the earth, I remember that I too am thought of, created, seen, given boundaries, and known in my complexity alongside all living things in the world.

When God answers Job’s accusations about being unjust with details of care for the cosmos, I find rest for the unanswered questions that keep me awake at night. I’m reminded that I can bring my honesty to God again and again, wrestle and question, and then let wonder minister to my bitter, tangled heart – softening it and helping it recover and remember who God is and whose I am.

Wonder leads me back to God and my own belovedness.

The bare, brown trees outside have become messengers of grace to me as I wait for winter to move on – both the literal season and the years-long season of the soul I’ve been in. I see them with the backdrop of the sunrise these days and remember how much unseen work and life is there in their root systems and trunks despite what looks stripped bare and dead. I’m so glad for their company and for the hand of God in every part of creation that waits and makes room for the kingdom of God alongside the wild aches and hard questions that remain.

 

Listen to today’s devotion below or on your favorite podcast app. 

 

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