Trees

I love trees.  Not like in a tree-hugger sort of way, I am just enamored at their beauty and design.  I am particularly interested in the oaks.  It takes around one hundred years for an oak tree to even start to drop acorns.  Some of the oak trees here in the valley are over 800 years old.  That's right, oak trees can live over a thousand years!  I have an oak tree inscribed on my wedding ring, and paintings and photographs throughout our house of oak trees.  Oak trees symbolize for me "a long obedience in the same direction" and the hope of the fruit that follows.

When you walk through a field here in the valley you are going to see many different oak trees.  Some are rotten, some are robust, some are littering the ground with acorns, others are losing limbs that are lying all over the ground.  People are like this.  Jesus said you can determine a healthy tree by the fruit it produces.  A bad tree produces bad fruit, and a good tree produces good fruit (Luke 6:43).

According to Psalm 1 our mind is the soil that is saturated with either nutrients or toxins.  Our mind is where the roots of our soul are embedded.

Psalm 1:1-4
"Blessed is the man, who walks not in the counsel of the wicked
nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers;
but his delight is in the law of the Lord
and on his law he meditates day and night
He is like a tree planted by streams of water
that yields its fruit in its season
and it's leaf does not wither, in all that he does he prospers.
The wicked are not so, but are like the chaff that the wind drives away."

Philippians 4:8-9 likewise says,
"Finally brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.......practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you."

Our souls need good soil.  If the meditation of your heart is darkness then you will be dark.  If like the psalmist you long for the water of the word, truth, and beauty--you will begin to bear fruit.