One leaf left...

I noticed one special thing on my birthday morning. The tree outside my bedroom window stood stark & bare, its leaves shriveled & dead, had fallen to the waiting earth. Except for one. Pale, taut, sapped of its nourishing juices, it clung tenaciously to the very top of the tree. One leaf left. One leaf alone against the wind & the chilling snow flurries, hanging on for its life, refusing to give into nature’s persistent invitation to die.


There was something poetic about the way that leaf resisted as long as it did, high at the top, long after the others had gone the way of millions of leaves before them. Day after, as we watched the little drama through me bedroom’s window, my mother openly cheered the leaf’s courage, “Hang in there!” she’d say. And my brother would say, “What’s the matter with you? It’s just a stupid leaf?”

Then one quite moment, as I stood by the window alone, I gleaned an invaluable lesson from that pathetic little leaf. Illuminated by lights from nearby apartments, it still clung stubbornly to the top of the naked tree & watching it, I was suddenly filled with hope – warming, uplifting, healing hope.

It was as if the Lord were telling me that when everything grimly crumbles, when the crowd drifts away without me, when every element seemed to oppose & torment, I can turn to Him for hope & strength to cling to the top & refuse to be defeated.

The next morning, the leaf had finally fallen & been blown away. I knew it eventually would, of course. And like many last hopes, perhaps it was crushed by a careless passerby.

But there would be more in the spring, I thought. There’s always hope.