The Way Trees Heal

When a tree is struck by lightning, carved by a blade, or broken in a storm, something remarkable happens beneath the bark. The tree does not heal the way our bodies do. It cannot regenerate damaged wood or erase the scar. Instead, through a process that forest pathologist Dr. Alex Shigo called CODIT — Compartmentalization of Decay in Trees — the tree walls off the wound. Chemical and physical barriers form around the injured area, sealing it so that decay cannot spread into healthy wood. Then the tree grows new wood around and over the damage, wood that is often denser and stronger than what came before.

The wound never disappears. Cut the tree open decades later and you will still find it buried deep inside. But it has been contained. It no longer poisons the living wood. Life has grown around it.

Forgiveness works much the same way. When we forgive, we are not pretending the wound never happened. We are not erasing the memory. We are doing something far more courageous — we are refusing to let the damage spread any further. We are allowing the grace of God to wall off the bitterness, the resentment, the endless replaying of old hurts, so that new growth can begin.

Paul wrote, "If anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: the old has gone, the new is here" (2 Corinthians 5:17). The Almighty does not ask us to forget. He asks us to let Him grow something new around what was broken — something stronger than the wound that caused it.