Life from Death

I know that these pictures aren't very "beautiful" but I had an inspiration from something I saw yesterday! This osage orange (and yes I had to google what the heck this thing was) has been sitting on our deck for about a month now. By pure coincidence I snapped this picture when I was testing out my new zoom lens, and I'm so excited that I did because I am about to tell you my Eureka moment!

So as this osage orange is on our deck, it not only sits there but it also rots. Its getting disgusting and brown and its skin is sagging, just like anyone else who ages, haha. And I keep thinking, why don't we throw this thing away? Its so gross and and isn't very aesthetically pleasing. Lets just say it: its dead. But of course I'm too much of a wimp to throw it away myself. So it continues to sit and die. Until one day...

Yesterday morning I came downstairs to start my day with a nice cup o' joe (or 4) and saw two little squirrels dancing/flirting on the deck. I watched them for the 25 seconds that my coffee was heating in the microwave and looked closer and noticed that they were feasting on the dead osage orange!! My first thought was "Yuck" - its like eating at a restaurant, these squirrels have no idea what could be wrong with this food. And then the more I thought about it, the more I realized the beauty in what had happened. How many times do we label something as dead? Our church, our family, even our spirits. And then someone gets down to the core of the dead thing and is surprised to find life and sustenance from a rotting osage orange? Sometimes it is good to let something go if the life has gone out of it. But just remember that sometimes those dead things can secretly have life way deep down inside, it just needs a little shredding, yikes!

**Apparently osage oranges are used to keep spiders away - like poison. I hope the squirrels survive**