There’s a tree in a yard just down the street from my home that toppled twice this past year during two separate storms. The first was a windstorm that swept through last spring. By the time the ruckus had passed, one of the three stems ascending from the tree’s primary trunk broke free and crushed a nearby fence. The second gale was a late summer thunderstorm that brought equally powerful wind. When it finally quieted, the other two stems had fallen and destroyed another portion of the same fence. All that remained was a four-foot trunk with a splintered top.

It wasn’t long after either storm that the property owners cut and removed the debris, eventually leaving what is now a grayed and seemingly dead stump. I drive past it every day. For me, even in its obtusely pathetic state, the stump has faded into the neighborhood’s landscape, becoming something I no longer even notice.

But then one day last week, I did notice it. Even in mid-winter, it had a shoot growing from its top. Astounded, I circled back around and stopped to take a picture.

I’m not an arborist. Still, I know most deciduous trees in Michigan hibernate in winter. Essentially, they go to sleep at the end of summer. They slip into their dormancy stage, locating their essential nutrients in their roots. Doing this helps to keep them healthy and ready to bloom again in the spring. That’s why the leaves fall in autumn. The trees are shutting down the supply lines to everything but the roots, starving its skyward limbs and keeping the food where it’s needed most.

But this tree is not sleeping. It’s awake and growing in winter. Wearing only a slightness of green on one of its two leaves, a passerby can see by its sprig that it’s struggling against the elements. Its tiny, outstretched appendages are tinged with shades of autumn’s hues. Still, there it is, pushing up from a seemingly lifeless trunk, attempting to snatch every bit of Michigan’s occasional wintertime sunlight.

While barely anything at all, it’s an inspiring scene. Against the bleakest landscape, while everything else around it has given up and gone to sleep, it is awake, as if reaching up from hope’s nutrients with an unwillingness to forfeit.

Seeing this, as a Christian, I suppose my first inclination was to experience echoes of Isaiah 11:1, which reads, “There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit.” Isaiah’s words are forward-looking. They refer to Jesus. He is the One who, even as all mortal muscle for rescue was beyond spent, arrived bearing life. There He is. God did not leave us. He acted. He sent His Son, just as He said He would. Hope against all hope has been fulfilled. The Son has brought new life into what seemed to be Death’s dooming winter. And joy of joys! From His person and work, branches emerge and grow where no one thought they could. And this happens no matter life’s seasons, each shoot bearing extraordinary fruit (John 15:5).

I had a before-worship conversation on New Year’s Day with the chairman of our Board of Elders, Harry. Analyzing the societal landscape, we predicted that the forthcoming year would likely be far bumpier than the previous one. For the record, we weren’t being pessimistic but realistic, and in a sense, we were admitting to our need for the fruits that can only be plucked from Christ’s tree. In the New Year, we’re going to need the fruits of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Galatians 5:22-23). We’re going to need fortitude, the kind that wholeheartedly owns the title “Christian” (James 1:2-4; John 16:1-4). We’re going to need endurance (Romans 5:1-5). We’re going to need wisdom, the kind that can’t be duped by evil disguised as good (Ephesians 5:15-17). We’re going to need persevering strength to follow Jesus when doing so might appear to make very little sense (Hebrews 12:1; Luke 5:4).

We’ll need to be hope-filled sprigs against this world’s dismal backdrop (Romans 15:3).

But there’s another thought to be had. As a perpetual watchman for summer, the tree’s lonely sprig was a “consider the lilies of the field” moment (Matthew 6:28). It had me thinking about how God loves and cares for His people. Taking the stump’s picture, I spoke out loud to myself, “Storms will come, people will cut down the lilies, but nothing can stop spring from coming.” Christians will know what I meant.

No matter how the world rages, God’s promises will not be stopped (Romans 8:31-39). He’s caring for us now. As He does, we know the springtime of eternal life is coming. This means that even in the face of persecution and Death, believers have a limitless wellspring of hope. Like the stump’s sprig, what the world might expect from us in the darker moments is not what we’ve been recreated to do. The world will bear down on us with icy impositions, expecting that we’ll shrink into self-preserving hibernation. But instead, we reach up to the heavens as sprigs in winter. We stretch out in stark contrast to the surrounding world, bringing even the littlest bit of color into the sin-sick grays of this passing world.

We endure when enduring seems impossible.

This is my continued prayer for you in the New Year. God grant it.