Yesterday at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, Michal and I came upon a beautiful tree called the Littleleaf Palo Verde. The little leaves were so tiny and so bright in the late winter sun. The tree was so tall and strong, with so many flourishing branches. So this morning, we turned to www.desertmuseum.org, and we were astonished to learn that "these trees can live to be more than 100 years old, possibly as old as 400 years," all the while feeding countless birds, and other seed-eaters, including humans.
How do they do that? "The tree flowers profusely for 2 weeks in late spring.... Seeds that have not been retrieved and eaten germinate when the summer rains come....Crops are abundant in most years. The O'odham preferred to eat the green seeds or pods; young seeds are tender and taste much like fresh peas. The Seri ate the fresh green seeds and also toasted, ground, and ate the mature seeds in a gruel." (A Natural History of the Sonoran Desert, The Arizona Sonora Desert Museum Press, Tucson, Arizona, c. 2000.)
This is the kind of abundance Jesus brings into our lives and communities. Each of us can be a Littleleaf Palo Verde, a tree with tiny bright leaves that feeds all the creatures around it, and whose seeds sustain the lives around us in the present and for hundreds of years.