Night Lessons from Trees & Their Shadows

“The heavens declare the glory of God, the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech, night after night they reveal knowledge. They have no speech, they use no words; no sound is heard from them. yet their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the end of the world. (Psalm 19:1-4).

A village in Mali, March 17, 2016

I stepped out of my little mud-brick house this evening – which is still radiating with the absorbed heat of a noonday sun – to walk a bit in the cooler night air and be refreshed by the breeze, to enjoy the stars and the moon overhead, the intricate shadows of trees at my feet, and the general peace of a landscape at rest after another punishing day of dry season heat and glare. It seems that heaven and earth were working in tandem just now, first capturing my attention with the sheer beauty of my nighttime surroundings, pointing out one thing and another, and then telling me of age-old truths that are the very source of that beauty…

I don’t think there’s a camera in the world that could adequately capture the scene and give you the true sense of it: a moon just over half-full, directly above, and the brightest of the stars arranged in their ageless patterns around it, the outline of several houses in the distance with their corrugated metal roofs faintly glowing like old silver, the bleached dust of footpaths just visible in the night as if possessing a phosphorescence of their own, gently curving away toward the village. And the wind, soft and steady, coming out of the north – a wind that makes you thankful as it caresses your skin but is too gentle to rattle the leaf on a single tree. But it was the trees, graced by the moonlight, that eventually spoke to me. “Raisins Sauvages” as people call them here – though they have nothing to do with actual grapes. They are my favorites in this landscape, and in the silver light they strike an elegant pose, each twisting, curving branch clearly outlined against the night sky, their shadows fanning out on the ground around them like the work of a skilled calligrapher whose sole task is to make a faithful copy of their teaching – I suppose for the benefit of restless souls who walk and pray at night.

These trees are a study in tenacity, in economy, in calm assurance and in hope-filled perseverance. The roots spread out from the trunk in all directions, penetrating dry, stony earth and even grasping rocks in their quest for not only nourishment, but stability in these harsh conditions. They plan to survive for more than a single season. Early on in the long, grueling dry period, rather than hang on to their greenery, they drop their leaves, choosing to preserve and nurture the life hidden in trunk and roots, than to expend their energy on outward appearance. But there is art and grace in their serpentine, bare branches, which bend toward the ground and then reach out and up again. There is a humble confidence about them through those months in which grasses wither and fade, green turns to brown, and harmattan winds fling clouds of dust through the air. They are not worried. They patiently bide their time. And just as the powerful sun has wrung every last drop of moisture from the earth, they know their season of fruitfulness has begun…

It is now, with maybe six weeks left before the rains come again, that these ‘wild grape’ trees draw on their hidden resources to produce miniature clusters of berries which will swell modestly over the next month, turn a rich, dark red, and provide food for birds of all sorts – or even a refreshing juice to anyone who takes the time to acknowledge their effort and put forth some of his own. Those little clusters of dry-season fruit, and the bright green, heart-shaped leaves that begin to sprout along with them – they speak to me of cheerful perseverance, of confident hope in the faithfulness of a God who ordains every season. “Hold steady, don’t be anxious, continue in hope, and your fruit will not fail.” They have no doubt the rains will come soon, so they offer their best in anticipation, as visible words of encouragement to anyone with eyes to see: The reward of perseverance is sure, and renewal is just around the corner.