Ponderosa Pine cone Potential

I walked along the cart paths at the McCall Golf Course late last week. Along the way I found an awesome Ponderosa pine cone. I realized, that while walking I wanted to be holding something, so the pine cone was it.

Tuning into the wildlife, listening to the water flowing under the snow, holding that pine cone, the thought struck me. This looks so much like a grenade. I've held a blank grenade before, can't remember when, but the shape and design were so similar from my point of view. Exponentially heavier, but similar nonetheless.

Then I thought about the divergent purposes of each of those, the grenade explodes suddenly, designed for destruction. Noisy. Depending on the situation, its purpose is death. The pine cone doesn't explode per se, its shrapnel simply falls off and is buried.

There's a verse in scripture that says something about death being but for a moment, but life eternal.

Think of the potential of the quiet pine cone. What if only one of those shrapnel, buried, springs to new life. And what if over time, that new Ponderosa drops 10,000 grenades, rolling, floating, blown about by the high mountain winds. And what if only one of the shrapnel from each of those 10,000 cones springs to new life, suddenly from one seed there is 100,000 relatively young Ponderosa Pines.

I'm no botanist, but the point I'm considering is this: death is but for a moment, but life eternal. I thank God that the power of the grenade is nothing compared to the power of the pine cone.