Many Leaves One Tree

When I was a young child, perhaps too young to be having such profound thoughts, I remember thinking how odd it was that I was me, and that no one else ever would be. I remember playing one afternoon with my cousin. Our families had gone to a local campground for picnicking and hiking that day. At one point I retreated from the group and found myself sitting in the open trunk of the station wagon, coloring rocks. I was enjoying myself, in the quiet of it, when my cousin found me, and her feelings were hurt.

“Why did you leave?” she asked me.
“I wanted to be alone.”
“But why? I want to play with you.”
“I just did.”
It turned into an argument because neither one of us could quite understand the other. See, she was an only child. I was not. I had a little sister who followed me around, a lot. I meant no hard feelings when I stepped away. I just seized the opportunity to do so.
She yelled, “I don’t have any brothers or sisters. I’m alone all the time!”
And I argued back, “Well, I never get to be alone!”
I do not remember if a parent intervened, but I do remember her asking me if she could color with me. Within minutes of our misunderstanding, she simply joined me, and we quietly colored rocks together.

I remember thinking though, in that moment, she will never know what it feels like to be me. She will never think my thoughts or feel my feelings.

Likewise, I could never know what it was like to be her.

People often throw the terms unique or special around until they’ve lost all meaning, but this, to me, is what it is to be unique…each and every one of us. No one else will walk our walk, dream our dreams, feel our emotions, not entirely. In a world where God has made us all so intrinsically unique, why do we ever expect that we should see eye to eye?

 

My cousin and I never saw eye to eye on this matter. I will never know what it feels like to be an only child, and she will never know what it feels like not to be, but we sat down together and made pretty things. 

Prior to these verses the Bible says, “If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be?” (1 Corinthians 12:17)The fact is, we don’t have to see eye to eye in everything, to be who Jesus calls us to be. We were created​to be different, with different thoughts, different emotions, and different gifts. Those gifts were designed to work together as the body of Christ, to glorify the Lord.

 

​Like leaves on a tree, we all stem from the same roots. We may never have the same perspective from where we stand, but we can come together and make something pretty.