There aren't many things on this planet that have been alive for some 2,000 years, but last spring I stood in front of one of them. In the Waipoua Kauri Forest of New Zealand, measuring just over 45 feet in girth, Tane Mahuta stands as the largest known kauri tree in the world.
Countless trees have come and gone in that forest in the last two millennia. Wind, frost, fires, insects, invasive plants, and lumbering have all taken their toll. But this tree refused to concede. In my work as a Christian Science nurse I'm called upon to help people who are facing their own challenges, some of which seem pretty daunting. And I'm mindful of the fact that the people I help need me to be strong and steadfast—"full of faith" as Mary Baker Eddy put it in Science and Health (p. 395). So the significance of this kauri tree's sheer endurance was not lost on me.
It brought to mind a passage I'd been thinking a lot about from a collection of Mary Baker Eddy's letters and messages to churches. It reads:
