The Jesus Tree.

Between Baralaba and Woorabinda (an Aboriginal community) on the side of the red dirt road stands the Jesus Tree. With its broken off limbs the gnarled burl in the centre the resemblance to Jesus hanging on the tree/cross is striking. The face like burl is part of the trunk and was most likely caused by a wound to the tree when it was a sapling. As the indigenous community celebrate Easter around this tree I am mindful of the passage in Isaiah 53,

" The servant grew up before God—a scrawny seedling, a scrubby plant in a parched field. There was nothing attractive about him, nothing to cause us to take a second look. He was looked down on and passed over, a man who suffered, who knew pain firsthand. One look at him and people turned away. We looked down on him, thought he was scum. But the fact is, it was our pains he carried— our disfigurements, all the things wrong with us. We thought he brought it on himself, that God was punishing him for his own failures. But it was our sins that did that to him, that ripped and tore and crushed him—our sins! He took the punishment, and that made us whole. Through his bruises we get healed. "