Trees

There is a disaster brewing of epic proportions right in our neighborhood. Take the interstate from our rural community the 20 miles or so into the city and you can't miss it. But people do. No one seems to care. No one protests. No one came around asking us if we minded. There was no vote yea or nay. One day the heavy equipment operators just started taking trees down. Hundreds of trees. The land looked naked and barren. Homes of squirrels, birds. opossums, armadillos and other creatures uprooted. Now this may not seem like a big deal. It is progress, development. Best for us. We notice an earthquake and help the survivors for a few days until the next big news comes along. We are distracted by disasters. They are routine. So, its not at all surprising that we don't see the destruction of life along the interstate as we race at seventy miles per hour, or more, into work or the store or school or the doctors. Thats' the problem. We don't know what we are doing. Trees seem dispensable. Hope Jahren says in her book, Lab Girl, that in the last ten years we have cut down fifty billion trees. Every ten years we cut down one percent of the total forest left on earth, never to be regrown. That is a land area the size of France. One France after another, for decades, has been wiped from the globe, she says. A tree is nothing less than a miracle, a part of God's creation. For us to care for because it cares for us.