Sometimes a photograph doesn't really need much explanation. I suppose it seems a strange subject in a way, but I was impressed by the tenaciousness of this tree and couldn't resist memorializing the image. Notice how the roots on the side next to the water are stubs. Debris brought down by raging torrents in time of flood have severed those roots and left nothing but knobby remains. Yet still the tree clings to the bank and its roots penetrate the soil and hold it in place.
Those same roots also help to stabilize the bank and keep it from caving into the waters as they rush by. Rather than allowing that precious resource, built over hundreds of years, to be washed away and turned into silt as it mixes with plant detritus before being deposited somewhere down stream, that soil remains in place to nourish plants that provide food for the wildlife harbored there. This tree literally gives root to an entire community.
I know a few people like this tree. They have been battered and torn by life, yet still they hang on. They anchor families and sometimes entire communities because of their tenaciousness. In this year of floods across the Midwest there are many farmers who would fit that category. In spite of the rushing waters that stripped the soil and covered the land with debris, delaying planting long past the optimum, they have persevered in their quest -- no, their calling -- to grow food for the world.
"Therefore, my dear brothers, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain." -- 1 Corinthians 15:58
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