My coworker and I were working in one of the cold frames. I'm not even sure anymore what our job was that day. Weeding? Sorting plants? Condensing the beds to make room for new trees? I don't remember.
What I do remember, however, is that my coworker called out to me, "Look at this tree! It looks all beautiful in the outside, but it is all brown and dead on the inside!" I walked over to him, and saw he was right. On the outside, the tree looked beautifully green. It looked like a healthy plant. But once I pulled some branches aside, I saw the inside: ugly, dry, and brown. Was it supposed to be that way? Are some trees only beautiful on the outside? I didn't know. I only worked at the nursery for a few weeks at that point, and there was much I still had to learn about the trees. However, my coworker's comment struck me. Is that not often true about us as well? We look beautiful on the outside. We live outwardly decent lives. We go to church, read the Bible, and have serious conversations. We might even attend Bible study groups, and teach Bible to our own children or to our students at school. We dress in a modest and decent way. But what about the inside? By nature, it is brown and dry inside. Ugly. Dead. Sinful. There is no life to be found! That outward "beauty" is just a cover of our sinful, lifeless heart inside! What a miracle if God, through grace, changes our heart inside! He can make our ugly, dead, sinful heart alive again. Then, our decent lives are not a way to try to cover up anymore, but a reflection of what lives on the inside.
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AuthorHi! My name is Marina. Besides running this website, I am also a teacher, and I work in a nursery with a great variety of trees. On this page, I like to reflect on some "lessons from nature". ArchivesCategories |