The Trees That Fed Their Young

In 1997, ecologist Suzanne Simard at the University of British Columbia made a remarkable discovery. She found that trees in a forest are not competing individuals but a connected community. Beneath the soil, vast fungal networks — sometimes called the "Wood Wide Web" — link tree to tree, root to root. Through these hidden channels, mother trees send carbon, water, and defense signals to younger seedlings struggling in the shade. When a mother tree is dying, she does something astonishing: she increases the flow, pouring even more of her remaining resources into the trees around her.

The forest survives because the strongest give to the weakest through channels no one can see.

This is love as Scripture describes it. Paul tells the Corinthians that love "does not seek its own" (1 Corinthians 13:5). It transfers life at personal cost. It feeds others through hidden sacrifice. The mother tree does not stand tall merely for her own benefit — she stands tall so that others might live.

The most Christlike love in your congregation may be happening right now, invisibly. A grandmother praying through the night. A father working a second shift so his daughter can study. A neighbor leaving groceries on a porch without a note. Love's deepest work is underground — unseen, costly, and life-giving.