Overcoming Obstacles in Life: Lessons from a Tree

My friend, Jon, was hiking through a forest – his gaze alternating between watching the path and gazing to the tops of the massive trees around him.

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The trees seemed relentless as they reached toward the sky with their branches spread out as if declaring their own power in the forest.

His thoughts wandered to the beginning of the trees – tiny nuts scattered from their mother trees, taking root as the rain softened the ground until it swallowed them into the soft earth.

The warmth of the sun, the nourishment of the rain, and the nutrients from the soil all worked together as our great Creator designed it to do, and a seedling poked its head out of the earth.

A new tree was growing.

The potential for a massive towering tree had begun.

The pattern of all the trees in the forest seemed the same – each at a varying degree of growth – branches reaching high, roots going deep.

In Ezekiel 31, the Lord uses the analogy of a tree to describe what Assyria was like – “beautiful branches and forest shade, and very high and its top was among the clouds.”

It’s easy to see what the Lord was referring to when you walk through a forest yourself and take time to reflect.

Suddenly Jon came upon a tree that had met an obstacle – a huge obstacle that was immoveable.

It was a rock right in the path of where some of its roots needed to go as it grew bigger.

The tree couldn’t substitute the path of the root and go elsewhere or then the stability would be compromised. Not a good thing when you intend to grow hundreds of feet tall.

The obstacle had to be overcome.

There was only one thing the tree could do: embrace the obstacle!

That is what we have to do in our lives when we come up to an obstacle that we cannot change.

In order to overcome it, we must embrace it.

Think of Joni Eareckson Tada – a woman who became a parapalegic after a diving accident. She couldn’t change her obstacle but she could embrace it.

And then there is Nick Vujicic who was born without any arms or legs.

Did he despair of life? No, he embraced his obstacle and used it for an opportunity of ministry.

Now your obstacle is probably not that devastating, but still it is something in your life that you can’t change.

Perhaps it is a child with special needs or a physical trait you were born with or the death of someone you loved.

Or maybe it is something that can’t change but you have to cope with its reality until it does change – maybe an unsaved spouse, or a health challenge, or slim finances.

Whatever your obstacle is right now, you can overcome it.

Learn a lesson from this tree: embrace the obstacle and keep growing!

First published: Sep 2014

Updated: Jun 2018

Photos by Jon Wheeler; used by permission