I Am Shorter Than A Redwood Tree

Two weeks ago I visited a sequoia grove near where my parents have recently moved. If you are not nature person, sequoia redwood trees are essentially the largest living organisms known to man. The largest is this stupid mushroom thing that lives underground and nobody ever sees, so I consider the sequoia the true largest living thing. Do not debate me on this. You will lose.

Anyway, the giant redwood is native only to a small region of the Sierra Nevadas in California. When reports of these trees first made it to the east, they were considered a load of bovine excrement. You see, these trees are not only big, they are not only huge, they are big huge!

Most are only around 200 feet tall, but their height is not their impressive feature, it is their girth. The trees I saw were all about 25 feet in diameter. If you flunked geometry like I almost did, 25 feet in diameter is pretty big. Based on my inaccurate measurements, I’m about 2 feet in diameter. I’m also only 6.15 feet tall. Blue whales are only about 100 feet long and nowhere near 25 feet in diameter. So we conclude that the tree is a lot bigger than me and several times the size of the most giantest whale.

So the trees are big. Woohoo!

They weren’t always that way, though. They started out as seeds the size of the period at the end of this sentence. All it took was about 2500 years of sunlight and water and dirt to turn that seed into the giants that you see in the pictures I posted. That means that these trees sprouted around the same time King Nebuchadnezzar ruled the world, and the cones they sprouted from fell out of trees that Noah probably planted. Think about that while you try to sleep tonight.

When you’ve been around that long, you’ve seen an awful lot. As you can observe in the pictures, the majority of these living fossils have severe fire scarring. Over the span of millennia, they have survived numerous forest fires. The secret is in their bark, which is spongy and a very efficient fire retardant. Fire after fire, the trees survived undaunted.

Then about one hundred years ago some guys named Teddy Roosevelt and John Muir found them and decided to make them part of a national park. Through the efforts of man, all forest fires were quenched long before reaching the redwoods.

Then something happened. Several decades ago, forest rangers began to notice that there were no young redwood trees. The old ones were fine, but the new ones simply could not take root. The culprit? Severe lack of forest fire.

In order for the seeds to break out of the cones, they must catch fire and be partially burnt. Then, while the trees are growing, fire must come through and remove other plants which may be competing. Saplings of other trees, ferns, weeds, et cetera all burn away in a forest fire. The redwood trees scar, but they survive and eventually flourish.

It is a little like that with us. The question of why a good God allows us to suffer is one that is difficult to answer. Why do bad things happen to good people? We will inevitably face things that try our faith in the very existence of God. At times it seems like we suffer for no purpose. The effects of sin are felt all throughout the world, and times will not always be good. Forest fires eventually raze away our dreams, and scars eventually form in lives. But like the redwood tree, use the fire to your advantage. Take away things which compete for your salvation, and grow stronger in your faith knowing that your suffering will eventually end.

And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose. Romans 8:28 NKJV