Lent Devotional – Beech Trees

Thursday, April 10

By: John Eldridge

See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.

Isaiah 43:19

The woods behind our house are full of beech trees. They are the trees that do not shed their leaves until the new growth in the spring pushes the tender leaf out and, in the process, pushes out the old papery leaves as well.

The beech’s contribution to Lent is just this: we are like these old paper-thin leaves on the trees, awaiting the spring which will push our new growth out and let us become like these shiny new beech leaves that come in the spring.

Lent tells us that when something dies, something is born – just like the beech leaves. Death in the fall and rebirth in the spring, and the cycle continues on and on, the rhythm of life.

Prayer

Help me to become a new person this Lent.

Amen.