Behold a Tree

     Watercolour by Margaret M Brownlow

Behold a tree.  Outwardly it has a hard and rough shell, appearing dead and encrusted, but the body of the tree has a living power, which breaks through the hard and dry bark and generates many young bodies, branches and leaves, which, however, all are rooted in the body of the tree.

Thus it is with the whole house of this world, wherein the holy light of God appears to have died out, because it has withdrawn and seems dead.  But love ever again and again breaks through this very house of death and generates holy and celestial branches in this great tree, and which root in the light.

                                         Jakob Bohme (1575 - 1624)  German Christian mystic and theologian.