When the cold, gray days of winter get me down, I go looking for God with my camera, seeking signs of the Spirit amidst the dirty piles of snow, cracked sidewalks, strewn garbage of our city streets.

On winter morning, much like today, I went walking and saw this tree.  It was big and tall.  Buds were just beginning to form on its leafless branches.  It leaned a bit toward a run-down old rooming house on the south side of the street, and then it shot straight up in the air.

The branches on the street side had been clipped and removed, but the branches overhanging the sidewalk, interspersed with telephone cables and electric wires, were a sight to behold.  They were a virtual store  filled with the remnants of life: a broken doll, an old mop, a bicycle wheel, toilet paper, and a shoe.  I made its portrait and entitled it “The Garbage Tree.”

A few years later, I walked by it again.  Much to my surprise, there was a brand new house smiling on this old tree now flourishing with new life.  It still reminds me that God makes new of out of old, whole of brokenness, and life out of death.  The Garbage Tree teaches me that with God all things are possible.  Maybe I should simply call it God’s tree.

To read more about “The Garbage Tree,” check out my book Interrupted by God: Glimpses from The Edge, published by the Pilgrim Press in 2004.