Hello world, wake me up to another good, good morning time to go.

Are you ready to explore God's wild and wonderful world?

Welcome to the Nat Theo podcast.

I'm your host, Aaron Linum.

I'm a certified master naturalist, Bible teacher, and author.

And I am so excited to dive into God's written word, the Bible, and his created world with you.

Hello, listeners, and Merry Christmas.

I hope you are having a beautiful Christmas week and Advent season as we reflect on Jesus coming to earth to save us.

You know, when I was a little girl, my family went out to cut our own Christmas tree

every year. I grew up in the state of Wisconsin, and we would go to local tree farms where people

grew pine trees very carefully for people to come and cut down every Christmas. I remember wandering around these tree farms with my

brother and sister and parents as we searched for the perfect Christmas tree. When I grew up and had my

own family, my husband, kids, and I moved to Colorado. I was so excited our first Christmas to go out into the wilderness of the Rocky Mountains

and find and cut down the perfect Christmas tree,

only to find out that wild trees are definitely not perfect. They are not the perfect shape,

and they do not have the perfect number of branches in the perfect places. That year, we came

home with a tree that was definitely not perfect. And to be honest, I was a bit disappointed. We have lived in Colorado

for nine years now, and my idea about what a perfect Christmas tree is has definitely changed.

Nowadays, I just love venturing out into the wilderness and wandering through the wintry forest to find our

tree. This year, after we had looked around for a while for a nicely shaped tree, we decided to

choose a tree that truly represents the Colorado wilderness, a ponderosa pine tree.

This is not a pine tree that you think about when you picture a Christmas tree.

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