Cross thoughts: Christian ideas seen in Sudanese every day life.
Trees, like this silhouette on Crocodile island in the Blue Nile, are a part of daily life. We enjoy sitting in the shade they offer. We watch birds feeding or nesting within their branches. We may use their leaves for a variety of purposes, like the Neem planted to keep locusts and other crop pests away. We may eat their pods or fruits, like the Tamara Hindi, the Moringah, the Mango and the Date. We could make boats from some big trunks, as people do along from Abu Rof in Omdurman. We may simply burn some tree wood.
Many people take trees for granted. My neighbour’s children used to climb my trees to get the fruit. They did so before it was really ready to eat – and it would frequently be wasted, thrown away on the ground after just one bite!
The spread of the desert in Sudan used to increase as trees were chopped down for immediate use. They were never replaced with more for the future.
These sad mistakes remind us never to neglect one old wooden tree. It was sometimes called a cross. On it, all the wrongs of the world have been put right.
Today, we can be changed by it’s fruit. We dare not lose our opportunity.
“Jesus Christ himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed”, 1 Peter 2:24.
October 2007.