The Fallen Tree That Gives Life

In the old-growth forests of Washington's Olympic Peninsula, something remarkable happens when a towering Western red cedar finally falls. Rather than simply rotting into nothing, the massive trunk becomes what foresters call a "nurse log."

Over decades, the fallen giant slowly surrenders its stored nutrients back into the forest floor. Mosses blanket its bark. Ferns take root in its softening wood. And then, most remarkably, seedlings of new trees — hemlock, spruce, even new cedars — begin sprouting directly from the decomposing trunk. The fallen tree literally gives its body so that a whole new generation of forest can rise.

Walk through the Hoh Rainforest today and you will see colonnade after colonnade of towering trees standing in perfect rows, their roots straddling the ghost of the nurse log that fed them. The dead tree's sacrifice is written into the very shape of the living forest for centuries afterward.

Jesus told His disciples, "For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many." Christ is the ultimate nurse log — the King of Glory who fell not by accident but by divine purpose, surrendering everything so that new life could take root in every soul who receives Him. His death was not defeat. It was the most life-giving act in all of history, and we are the forest still rising from His sacrifice.