Not a Leaf Falls

 

A highlight of a recent trip east was getting to be in New England during the fall season. Ever since becoming a submitter, the autumn season has always filled me with awe. For about 6 weeks or so leaves are constantly changing color and ultimately dropping from their branches.

[6:59] With Him are the keys to all secrets; none knows them except He. He knows everything on land and in the sea.

Not a leaf falls without His knowledge. Nor is there a grain in the depths of the soil. Nor is there anything wet or dry, that is not recorded in a profound record.

So, praise God I got to experience this. There were days when it was windy and I would observe uncountable massive amounts of leaves blowing and falling from where they resided for the last 6 months. And they don’t fall straight down, the wind carries them. Sometimes a great distance before they hit the ground. Then there are times where there was no wind to speak of and you see just one leaf gently making its descent to the ground.

The drive from Maine to Vermont was gorgeous. There was still a lot of color to behold in the changing leaves even though it was a little past peak foliage. So, the drive from Maine to Vermont through New Hampshire, was pretty much trees. Trees everywhere. And during that drive leaves were falling; all the time leaves were falling. And God knows every single one!

The gravity of 6:59 fills my mind with wonder. How can God know about all these leaves? I’m literally surrounded by trees and leaves and rocks. Pretty much nothing else. And not just the leaves that are still on the trees, and not just the leaves that are falling almost constantly, there are all the leaves that have already fallen making the ground a kaleidoscope of color. Everywhere I looked in the woods there was a blanket of fallen leaves. How many? Only God knows their number.

[72:28] … He has counted the numbers of all things.

So, I was wondering if there was a way to approximate how many leaves there are in the world. First we need to know how many trees there are on earth. Best I could come up with is about 3 trillion. But there are so many different types of trees. Over 60,000 species of trees on the planet. So, coming up with an average leaf count is pretty much impossible. But I kept digging.

I found that mature oaks and maples have approximately 200,000 leaves. But what about pine trees? All those needles. Have you ever walked through a pine forest? Thick beds of brown pine needles everywhere. No one seems to be interested in knowing how many pine needles there are on a pine tree. I did find a little article on a girl who had a homework assignment on calculating the number of needles on a 7 foot Christmas tree. They came up with about 50 million

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