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Father Len reveals that trees are symbols for God and human beings and trees represent the most important choices we make in life.
Highlights, Ideas, and Wisdom
- Trees are the third most common thing mentioned in the Bible.
- God loves trees and gives them a ring every year on their birthdays.
- Trees are places where human beings choose to worship or reject God.
- There is a tree present at every major event in the Bible.
- Every major character in the Bible is associated with a type of tree.
- The only thing Jesus ever harmed was a tree that produced no fruit.
- The Bible begins and ends with the “tree of life” and trees are present throughout the Bible.
- The story of human history is choosing between two trees: the tree of life and the tree of good and selfishness.
- There are two types of food. One gives us physical life. The other gives us spiritual life.
- If we eat the fruit of the tree of good and selfishness we are cut off from the covenant with God and disconnected from the source of life.
- The temptation to eat the fruit of the tree of good and selfishness is the promise of the power to define what is good and evil for ourselves rather than God.
- We don’t have to earn the fruit from the tree of life. God gives it freely to us.
- When anybody makes a commitment to God in the Bible there’s always a tree, an altar, and water present.
- The tree of good and selfishness often appears in the form of an Idol in the Bible. The Idol is a false tree we create to define our own version of morality.
- The Hebrews called idols “luxuriant trees” representing the pursuit of power, sex, and money for happiness. The Hebrew letters for “luxuriant tree” cleverly spell Garden of Eden backwards.
- Addictions always promise happiness, but in the end leave us destroyed.
- Trees in the Bible symbolize commitments and altars represent the rituals around the commitments.
- The spiritual life in the Bible is pictured as a tree that must push its roots down deep to find the water of life necessary to produce good fruit in all seasons of life.
- Jesus’ cross is called a tree in the Bible representing the tree of life. That’s why there is one cross next to or above the altar in every Catholic Church. It’s a reminder of the tree we should be eating from each day for eternal life.