New Life

Red oak trees have an incredible property to them. In the fall, the leaves on most trees will slowly change colors and eventually fall to the ground. But red oak trees will retain many of their leaves throughout the winter. In the spring, as the tree’s sap causes buds to form on the exterior, they push the dead leaves off the branches (Thomas Constable, Notes on Galatians [Sonic Light, 2017], 84). The new life pushes out the old. The same is often true of humans—these two sets of behaviors ar...