Skip to main content

Tree of Life



Here's a devotional from the new Gardens of the Heart
 
 
The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life, and he who wins souls is wise.
Proverbs 11:30 NIV

If you were going to choose a tree of life in nature, the olive tree is a good choice. Not only does it produce olives, but that wonderful healthy olive oil is pressed from the fruit, the leaves are used in medicinal teas, and there is research into the development of an efficient and renewable energy source from the waste produced by oil pressings.

It was an olive leaf carried by the dove to Noah that brought hope to the weary residents of the ark. The olive branch is also the familiar symbol for peace we use today.

Olive trees have long lives and there are some trees in the Garden of Gethsemane that are believed to date back to the time of Jesus.  The olive tree isn’t impressive in size or particularly beautiful, but it’s tough, productive, and has loads of character.

And that’s what we need to be. It doesn’t matter what we look like or where we’re planted, but it does matter what our heart looks like and what we produce.  If we’re a tree of life that extends kindness, love, and mercy, that fruit will draw people to the Lord Jesus.

He stands ready to help you produce good fruit. Will you be wise and live with purpose, exhibiting Christ today?

Olive Trees in Israel

Labels

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Castile Knapper

It's always fun to have family members who have a bit of notoriety because of interesting pursuits. My husband's cousin, Ken Wallace is one of those.  Ken is an artist who works in stone as a flintknapper. Flintknapping is the ancient art of shaping tools and weapons from pieces of stone. Knapping was part of the survival skill set of Native Americans. Arrowheads, knives, hatchets, and more were shaped from raw pieces of flint or chert.  Ken knapping at the Wallace Reunion Ken became interested in this process back in 1985. One of his favorite pastimes was searching fields for arrowheads, both of which are pretty plentiful in Western New York. Freshly plowed ground in rural areas often yields many different types of arrowheads since the Iroquois were the original residents of what are now corn fields and cow pastures. Fascinated with how the Iroquois made their weapons and tools, Ken started to try and recreate them. He says a lot of trial and error were involved in the...
1 comment
Read more

Victim of Circumstances?

 The article below has been getting a lot of hits lately, and I thought it may be time to repost it. A couple of weeks ago, I took the picture below. I thought it pretty much sums up our life journey. We never know what's around the corner for us.  Circumstances change in seconds some days. Whether the circumstances of life are good or bad, we're fond of blaming them for how we behave and think. Here are a few of the well-used excuses:  "I'm a victim of circumstances.""The situation is impossible." "The circumstances are beyond my control." "Under the circumstances"...fill in the blank. Funny how principles, self-control, and  positive thinking can go out the window when we're "under the circumstances."  And lest you think the author is above blaming circumstances, she is not. I've used most of the excuses above, whether spoken or unspoken.  An imprisoned and wrongly accused Jewish C...
1 comment
Read more

Smores Anyone?

We lived in the same house for 25 years just outside of our small hometown of Castile. It was a good little neighborhood and was mostly quiet except for the traffic on Route 39. When the signs of spring arrived, it was also time to pile up tree branches, and clean out the garage or the shed of burnable miscellany. Each year there seemed to be a contest between my husband and the next door neighbor to assemble a burn pile of enormous proportions.  Day after day I watched their piles grow until tepee-shaped woodpiles were just right to be torched. There was an art to the arrangement so that it would be totally consumed in a short amount of time. It was sort of like a bonfire on steroids. Now the neighbor enjoyed the element of surprise on the neighborhood and waited for quiet Saturday afternoons to begin his incendiary activity. KABOOM! You would have thought we were under attack by enemy forces. Then there was a rush of wind and the crackling of the k...
2 comments
Read more