The Story of a Pinon Tree

Though the fig tree may not blossom, nor fruit be on the vine; though the labor of the olive may fail, and the fields yield no food; though the flock may be cut off from the fold, and there be no herd in the stalls — Yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation.   
~ Habakkuk 3:17-18
 
There are a lot of dead branches under a pinon tree – like my life, a lot of dead dreams.  Even in a live pinon, the trunk and undercarriage look dried beyond redemption.  That is what I was seeing Monday – a life with a bunch of dead ends.  I even drew a picture of a tree with all its branches broken off with a bunch of jagged splinters left pointing up into the air.  It had no possibilities left – all the branches were destroyed. 
But in a pinon, if you look up, passed the brittle, brown branches, the outer, upper branches are robust and green.  But in order to see them you have to stop focusing on what is right in front of your face and look beyond what is near to what is farther away. 
This time of year, spring, a pinon is not simply green and alive but flourishing.  The tree God used to instruct me was putting out hundreds of tiny cones.  Silently, that tree was stalwartly claiming its right not only to a future but a bountiful one.
Sitting there under this odd combination of death and life, made me think life is like that.  In order for something new, something else has to end, to “die”.  Everything new in life, good or bad, is there because something else ceased to be.  A particular branch exemplified this as it appeared to abruptly end, like it was unnaturally chopped off.  Then it shot off in another direction, looping in an odd fashion around the road block and becoming a sizable branch.  Just like me, if I will let God do His work. 
Things don’t always come to fruition the way I think they should.  They can be amputated before their time (or maybe better said, before my selected time).  But...God.  And that’s what I was learning Tuesday...doors are made out of dead branches.