This is not a particularly artful photograph.
I snapped it rather impulsively, as we walked through the woods in northern Minnesota along the north shore of Lake Superior. It’s a place we love. For beauty, silence, rest, and refreshment in nature. I snapped it without worrying about how it was framed. Or whether it would be a satisfying photograph, worthy of being framed.
It’s part of a dead branch on the ground. It’s perhaps where it fell, perhaps where it was tossed or kicked by a previous hiker. From the looks of it, it’s from a birch tree—there were certainly a lot of them in the area.
But now the process of decay has set in. Lichen and fungal growths proliferate on the branch, helping to break it down to the dust it will eventually become. Yet, as a surprising expression of grace, this process of decay has beauty. White scalloped growths. Green-gray lichen spreading over the surface. The tiny lichen, delicate lace-like growths scattering across the bark. Larger, pale swellings seemingly making their way across the surface. And in the background an abstract canvas of leaves, pine needles, and little plants beginning their lives within the decay only to face their own decay in the end.
Here is fact. A truth. Hopefully beyond debate. God’s creation is worthy of attention, both to catch glimpses of glory and to tenderly care for it because it remains the Lord’s.
What looks to us to be a mass of disorder is really a part of the delicate and intricate system that occurs over a multitude of seasons to replenish and keep the woods vibrant and alive. It is, when we stop to consider it, amazing and resplendent of God’s glory.
Will such decay occur in the New Creation? Does the death of death promised in Christ’s cross and resurrection extend so far as to end such beauty? I’ve read philosophical and theological papers on the issue and concluded that trying to solve that conundrum is a fool’s errand. I suspect the answer is Yes, such plant decay will occur in the New Creation. It is part of an ongoing system of life and growth and flourishing. And it is often gloriously beautiful.
But don’t quote me on that. I am speculating, and that is dangerous. Suffice it to say that the New Creation will be far beyond our wildest imagination, because the imagination involved is not ours, but the God who is the I Am, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, world without end. Amen.
Photo credit: the author with his iPhone.
