I found myself on an odd route home from work yesterday, because I wanted to stop by a specific grocery store. At one point I was at a stop and noticed a small side street called Old Bent Tree. I then realized I was near an area of North Dallas called Bent Tree; an older but affluent community, country club and all.

I spent a lot of time as a kid riding around with my Grandma in that area. I didn’t know up from sideways when it came to driving directions, but without the tyranny of operating heavy machinery, I was free to observe and explore the world that passed us by. I recognized places and signs, even if I didn’t know how we got there or how we’d get back.

I remember seeing ‘Bent Tree’ on sub-division entrances, churches, businesses–it sticks. It evokes a clear visual. And one day I found it. The real one.

I was sitting in the back seat of my Grandma’s Ford Taurus, and I saw a tree that had splintered all the way into the trunk, causing nearly half of it to bend to the side.

“That’s the tree! That’s why it’s called Bent Tree!”

The tree was my Dead Sea Scrolls and Bent Tree my Qumran.

It was actually a bit scorched, probably a victim of a fairly recent lightning strike. But to me it had been like that since the beginning of time, and I was the first to observe it among the currently living. A grand excavation of generations past, and I didn’t even have to take off my seat belt.

Believing was easy and without question. Truth was clear. The world was everything just outside the back seat window.