Meditations on The Tree of Life

The drive to plant fruit trees has been a thought that urged me on from my earliest memories. I confessed at an early age that “I wanted to dig” at the dinner table when asked what I want to do when I grow up. The family laughed because what a silly thought, we are taught in this culture that one should do all they can to avoid having to dig the earth to make a living. Which is odd because the Latin root of culture, which (Cultura, Colere) means to dig, till, cultivate.

Despite culture’s signals to avoid digging for a living, at least it was for me, as I came of age. I was internally driven by what God made me to do, which was plant fruit trees and cultivate them. I believe God made me in this temporal earthly body to pursue a eternal future reality. The drive to plant and cultivate fruit trees is a eternal longing for the Tree of Life that is promised.

In chapter 22, in the Book of Revelation describes The New Jerusalem. In this New City of God, a river of water of life, clear as crystal, comes from the throne of God and of Christ, in the middle of the street. On either side of the river is the Tree of Life, bearing 12 kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit every month; and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. There will no longer be a curse.

Despite culture’s many signals, although the irony of the word culture is noted, to avoid having to dig the soil, my Creator, His Holy Spirit and savior, Jesus Christ set my heart to dig and plant here on earth as a meditation on the beauty of a future promise of healing from The Tree of Life.

the eternal, Tree of Life, which will heal the nations