Musings about a fruit tree

Outside my window there stands an fruit tree, now threadbare of leaves in the mid-autumn air. At times I would look up and out from my bed in the wee hours of mor'n and see bright light riding forth from the east, making long slender silhouettes that look like withered hands clawing desperately for the shroud of night to return. In the day it makes stark lines across the sky, slashing the stagnant blue into tiny fragments. Once a small bird rested upon one branch and chirped a tune in the afternoon breeze, a strange occurance indeed. I had looked at it from my desk, puzzled by the sound that usually comes in the morning. Then evening would come spilling on the wind, an ink-like stain that spreads from the west even as the light of day retreated, the slender fingers swaying in the wind. In the dead of night where sleeplessness reign, those dark lines would appear thicker yet softer in the starlight, and sometimes appear disjointed. It seems as if the branches are reaching into heaven itself, to wrestle starry gems from their resting places.

I could sit and look at this tree for hours, and it would never stop fascinating me. I wondered: this tree would have saw me when I was 13, newly arrived at a new house, unsure of the neighbourhood; it would have been amused at my effort in painting miniature models at 14; it would have watched me when I was 15, that day when I had stole away beneath it to examine my loot from a foray into the local shop; it would have laughed when I was 17 as I tried to clear possums from the gutter above my room; it would have... witnessed my first time in God's loving arms when I was 19 and alone in the dark room upon my bed; it would have observed my resolution at 20 to read the Word every night before I slept; it could be looking right now even as I am typing this at 21; indeed this tree has seen the shaping of me from boy to man (maybe). Scary thought, but yet somehow comforting and warm at the same time. This tree would know something about me, but to compare that with what God knows.... I guess if He has been here since Day One: how immeasurably more would He know about me?

Woah