What can we learn from giant sequoias?

Have you ever seen or stood below a giant sequoia tree? My family and I encountered a grove of them at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh a couple months ago. We have also seen the gigantic redwoods out at Muir Woods during a trip to San Francisco back in 2011. It is quite a humbling experience to stand beneath these grand specimens of God’s creation!

The writer of my daily devotional this morning was talking about sequoia trees (The Methodist Book of Daily Prayer, p. 168-169). Even though sequoias are among the world’s largest trees, they don’t have their own separate root systems. Instead, their roots intertwine with the roots of neighboring trees. That’s how they support and strengthen one another. “When a storm hits,” the writer observes, “they literally hold each other up.”

The writer went on to observe that we often want to see ourselves as independent, self-sufficient, and self-reliant. When problems come our way, we want to be able to handle them ourselves. “But this isn’t how we are created to live,” the writer suggests. “We are made to derive our strength from a power outside ourselves. We are meant to be rooted in Christ and to establish our strength from a source beyond ourselves.” In other words, we are meant to be like the giant sequoias—bound together and connected to one another for mutual strength and support.

The devotional closed with a line that I really like: “The bad news is that you can’t do life alone. The good news is that you don’t have to.”

Today I thank God for our rootedness together in Christ and in community with one another here at Signal Crest.