Twelve Feet of SeparationThe Bad Boys of EasterApril 17, 2022

In an online article from The Atlantic, author Ed Yong tells a story that illustrates an important truth. He writes, “At some point, a kauri tree fell in a New Zealand forest and no one noticed. Nor did anyone pay attention when the remnant of its trunk rotted away, leaving behind a stump that’s barely even a stump—a chair-size, hollowed-out half cylinder, sticking up from the middle of a hiking trail, leafless and apparently dead. 'It doesn’t look spectacular at all,' says Sebastian Leuzinger of the Auckland University of Technology. 'Everyone would have walked past it for years.'"

Out hiking with a colleague, Leuzinger stumbled across the tree stump. Yong continues, “He saw that even though it had no leaves, stems, or greenery of any kind, it did still contain living tissue—and when he knocked on the stump, it sounded different from deadwood. All appearances to the contrary, it was still alive.”

Things are not always what they seem.

There are a variety of factors that affect how our brains process information and come to conclusions. We rely on our senses to provide us with information. But we tend to enhance that information as it passes through various filters that we all use every day... things like past experience, memories, knowledge, and assumptions.

Optical illusions and practical jokes are effective because they mess with our assumptions. As Albert Einstein said, “Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.”

 Over the past couple weeks, we’ve been in a short series called, The Bad Boys of Easter. As we wrap up this weekend, we’ll discover, much like Leuzinger and his dead-looking, but not dead tree stump, that things aren’t always as they seem.

It’s true that things are not always as they seem. Sometimes, they’re better!