There Is Nothing So Insignificant

I am looking out my front window at the patterns on the sidewalk across the street. They are the moving shadows made by the leaves on the oak tree in front of our house. There isn't much to an oak leaf; in full bloom, it looks as if the ladybugs have already had half of it for lunch.

Then I glance up at the sun, a mighty body of blazing surface fire, fueled by an awful lot of hydrogen and, I suppose, oxygen (or something) in a billion-years' operation of fusion or fission (or something). I don't know how it works, but I do know that it's real powerful and you can't look directly at it or you will lose your sight.

And yet, those little oak leaves will block the sun from shining on the sidewalk. Each individual leaf has its mark, even the smallest. It amazes me that there is something this tiny, this fragile that can block the power of a giant, blazing star. It's almost as if these skinny, irregular leaves are saying to the sun, "Pump out the energy, the heat, the light all you want; any one of us can block it to the extent we are able. You can't make it through us. We will shield the birds and the bugs from you."

Or, in more common language, "Nyah, nyah, nyah."

Get enough leaves together and people will rest under them; their oxygen and their shade together will provide a coolness. We little note, nor long remember, the dimensions of these little sun-blockers until we start stripping the branches and chopping down the trunks that support them. Then, much too late, we realize that those little pieces of greenery were all that stood between us and the powerful, wilting sun.

God created the sun and said, "This is good." Then God created the trees and said, "This is better." Finally, God created the leaves and said, "This is what I really needed to give my people. They are some of the smallest of my creation, but there is nothing so insignificant that I cannot use it for good."