The Broken Tree Branch
Tucker Frye
While we were wandering the Noland Trail, I noticed a fallen tree branch that was lying in the water. The branch was around seven feet long. It was bent at a twenty or thirty degree angle and it looked as if the outside of the bend was tearing apart. It seemed as if the log had been dead and soaking for a long while. Clearly there was no stretch of life within the dark, moist wood. At first glance, it looked like nothing more than a rotting branch soaking in it's own death. Then I noticed the moss. Lush green lay across the branch. Not only that, but I could make out a few small fish that were lingering beneath the shadows provided from the wood. The branch seemed to provide them with a place to hide from predators. They could weave in and out of the smaller branches, or hide in the darkness that fell beneath the branch. What did I see when I first observed the branch? Death. However, when I looked more closely, I observed life abundant. Isn't it interesting how something so utterly dead, with no hope of being revived, can continue to provide life? I view death in the same way often. When something dies or is dying, I see no hope in it and no good from it. Whether it is a person, or maybe just a bad paper. Reflecting on the broken branch, however, gives me a new way to look at death. There is not just death and the end, there is also life that comes from death. It is important that we must search for life in death but it is there none the less.
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