Bending and Swaying

This summer I took a dune ride out through Saugatuck, Michigan. Such a fun place! Once we'd made it through the sandy hills we dipped into a forest behind them. Quiet and dark, it was amazing to think this enchanted area lay behind all that sand! But what grabbed my thoughts as the guide toured us through the birch, oaks, and maples were how many of the trees bent and turned at unique angles. I'd never seen anything like it! The guide called it phototropism, and though I had never heard that term before, I was immediately intrigued by its meaning.

You see, some of the trees had shot straight up and created a canopy over the forest floor making it hard for sunlight to reach below. And what is one thing a tree needs to grow? Light. So instead of staying in the dark, the new trees bent until they found the sunlight. Then when that sunlight was cut-off and the tree found itself in darkness again? Well it took another turn--sometimes in the completely opposite direction--so that it could find the light again. What an amazing phenomenon. After years of growth these trees didn't have a straight trunk, no, their trunks spoke of the story of how it bent, dipped, and swayed to remove itself from darkness and return to the light. That tree made seeking and remaining in the light at all costs its main goal, because it knew without that light, it wouldn't thrive.  Of course it made me think of our walk with God:)

I never took a picture that day! This is the closet
I could find online to a picture of phototropism:)

Friends, our walk with God is never a linear path. Life happens. Darkness presses in at times. And we have a choice; do we adjust to remain in God's light, or do we continue in the dark? God is always there. He's always beckoning us and ready to engulf us with his love and light, but there are times where we have to change the direction we wanted so that we can follow the path he's calling us to grow along.

Bend. Dip. Sway.

Grow.

And never stop seeking him.