For the past few days, the term “The Tree of Life” has been on my mind.  Apart from the initial Genesis picture that is painted from the words, I have been considering the words literally…

A tree is a manifestation of a seed that has entered the ground and matured over years of growth.  As I’ve considered them, The words “the tree of life” is symbolic of a period of time or a complete cycle of life…

As a child, I had a favorite maple tree in my yard. It was as if a painter had intentionally designed it with the perfect shapes and size…even affording me a perching spot at the very top where four branches grew out like the four points of a compass. I have so many memories of climbing and sitting at the top of that tree on a cool fall day from my perch where it seemed I could see the entire neighborhood… That tree is gone now…its season is over and it only continues to exist in my memories…

I was considering this last night as I entered my son Rocky’s room and prayed over him as he slept.  It seems like only yesterday when my four year old was born… Next year, the leaves of this season will fall to the ground and he will enter a new season of school years and summer vacations…Growth, maturity, sun up, sun down… He will always be my son, and how we interact will be different based upon his growth and maturity, but one undeniable fact remains…I will never be able to get today back…

As I pondered this it hit me…It’s so easy to miss the beauty of today’s bloom by allowing work or stress or events that in the grand scheme of things will not even amount to even a blip on our radar to interfere with our tomorrow memories… We will likely forget everything that happens today as it disappears into the blurr of 2012 and Once today is gone, the only life it will hold will be in our memories…if we made any…

I think that this is part of the “worry not what tomorrow brings” that the bible talks about… I believe a primary reason that we would fail to make any significant memories today would be because we are focusing so diligently on our tomorrows…Today, i’m choosing to not worry so much about preparing for tomorrow that I fail to see what is beautiful in the here and now.  I would encourage you to take a few minutes to shut off the computer, turn off the phone, unplug the television and spend some time making a memory that will live far beyond today in your mind or in the mind of the one you are making the memory with…

Our “tree of life” is alive today but today will never be again… Let’s all find something beautiful about it, Climb up into our perch, stop to intentionally inhale the cool autumn air and make a memory that time cannot take away…