Remember the maple outside my favorite coffee shop, the one that turned first? I told you to trust the timing and let the Gardener do the gardening. This week, it has something to say about judging others.

Today, I was sitting outside in the afternoon sun sipping my coffee as the owner of The Next Chapter returned from taking out the trash down the alley. I looked over at that same maple. Nearly every limb bare. Every twig showing. Just a few leaves barely hanging on. The rest of the street was just catching up in color, and our gorgeous tree had already let go of almost all of it.

“The first to have beauty is the first to be bare,” I said.

He didn’t miss a beat. “It’s dead.”

I’ll admit it looked that way. Hardly a leaf, no color, no shade. If you judged by what you could see, he had a point.

But something in me wouldn’t settle. “But is it?” I asked.

He smiled the way he does when he’s onto something profound, or at least when he THINKS he is onto something profound. “Sounds like another post.”

So here we are.

Look at the Sentence Again

The first to have beauty is the first to be bare. I said it like a eulogy, and the same words can open a longer story. Bare in October has said nothing yet about April. The buds for spring are already forming on those twigs, sealed up tight against the cold. Job looked at a tree cut down to a stump and called it hope, because even a stump will sprout again at the scent of water (Job 14:7-9). Paul wrote that outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day (2 Corinthians 4:16).

From the sidewalk, a bare branch and a worn-out person look about the same. Only the roots know the difference.

Judging Others From the Sidewalk

Roots live where nobody is looking. A tree can be in the hardest year of its life, and the only evidence on display is a bare branch. We know that about trees. We forget it about people. Judging others by what shows is an old habit.

Think about the neighbor who quit showing up. It’s easy to say they’ve checked out, or gone cold, or lost interest. It’s harder to wonder what is happening below the surface. Maybe they are sitting beside a parent through a long goodbye. Maybe they are waiting on test results, or juggling a stack of bills, or holding a marriage together with both hands. Maybe they are doing the deepest work of their life, the kind that looks like nothing from the street.

Now think about the one who bloomed early. We noticed the day they turned, and we cheered. Then their season changed, and they let go of the very things that made them beautiful: the job, the plan, the version of themselves everybody admired. The same crowd that applauded the color is now squinting at the bare branches and drawing a conclusion. Peaked early, we say. Too bad. That is judging others by a single season.

Here is something worth knowing about maples. Before a tree drops its leaves, it draws the nutrients back out of them and stores them for later. The letting go is part of how it makes it through winter.

I understand the temptation to call it dead, because I have been guilty of judging others by their branches myself. A bare branch hands you an answer in a single glance, and the glance feels like knowledge. Asking “but is it?” takes patience. It means staying near the tree a little longer than is comfortable and holding the question open.

Verdicts also travel. A tree can’t hear the word dead, but a person can. When we write someone off, they often feel it, and some of them stop growing in the very season they needed someone to say, “I’ll wait with you.” Judging others has a cost, and the person judged is the one who pays it.

So here is what I’m trying to practice whenever I catch myself judging others. Ask before I conclude. Remember what a person looked like in full color. Stay close through the cold part, because winter is when the quiet work happens, and time is the one thing a neighbor can offer that costs nothing.

Before Anyone Reaches for an Ax

I can’t tell you from my spot here on this sidewalk whether that maple is truly alive or dead. I do know how many people have been written off by someone who only looked at the branches, and I know “but is it?” is a good question to ask before anyone reaches for an ax.

We’ll have to keep our eyes peeled in April.