One morning, late in spring, during a very dark period in my life, I was blankly staring at an apple tree just outside my dining room window. The morning sun had just peeked over the mountain and a breeze was rustling the leaves. But I wasn’t focused on the tree, or the beauty of the morning, as much as I was fixed on a raw, painful thought: What does a person have to do in order for transformation of the heart to actually take place?
A couple of months prior, I had been on staff as the children’s pastor at the church I was attending. I loved the children and the ministry, and was zealous and passionate, working many long hours in order to bring about the vision God had given me. In fact, that was the story of my life, in and out of church, as long as I could remember.
My family of origin’s motto was “work hard and do a hundred percent at all times,” carrying with it the connotation that hard work brought about one’s value. Additionally, the denomination I grew up in taught that if Jesus had really transformed your heart you would do, do, and do for Him, because that’s what loving Jesus looked like. I did love Jesus. I had come to Him at a young age, and wanted very much to please Him. So my modus operandi was full throttle, no matter what—especially when the kingdom of God was involved.
However, deep below the surface of my hardworking zeal was a yawning, cavernous void I kept trying to fill with all the activity. I was desperately trying to muster a sense of worth. I had no idea that I already had value—intrinsic value, simply because God loved me and created me. I didn’t understand that my worth had never been contingent upon any activity. That transformation of my heart was a simple, yet extravagant transaction: God sending His love to me, and me receiving it.
So I stayed with what I knew until I burned out and drove the ministry into the ground.
Needless to say, the next months were spent in a counselor’s office unearthing all kinds of ugliness, pain, confusion and disillusionment, while wrestling with the belief that I did have value, as well as learning how to love myself enough to receive the love He was sending me, right where I was.
So that morning, pensive with the question and vacantly staring at the apple tree, I heard God speak out of the quietness: “What does a tree have to ‘do’ for photosynthesis to take place?”
“What?” I said.
“What does a tree have to ‘do’ for photosynthesis to take place?”
Refocusing my gaze on the tree’s rustling leaves, I intelligently replied, “Uh…receive light?”
“Exactly.”
Boom. I knew I had heard. My mind and soul were racing with the information welling up in me.
Photosynthesis is the miraculous process that transforms the light the apple tree’s leaves receive into food energy, instigating internal assimilation and vitality throughout its system, and then, as a mere consequence, releases oxygen into the atmosphere. In other words, life happens inside the apple tree before life emerges from it. The only thing it has to ‘do’ for that to take place, is receive light through the chlorophyll-containing cells in its leaves.
He spoke, again.
“Simply be a tree, child.”
In that instant, I realized my value was innate, just because God created me and loved me. The only activity I needed to ‘do’ for genuine transformation of my heart was to simply receive Light through my ‘chlorophyll-containing leaves’—my love-designed heart, soul and mind. Then He would miraculously do the ‘doing’ in and outside of me.
So, my encouragement to you and me is “Be a tree.”
…blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in Him. They will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream (Jeremiah 17:7,8).
…I am like an olive tree flourishing in the house of God; I trust in God’s unfailing love forever and ever (Psalm 52:8).
© Tawna Wilkinson 2026