Tree of Life

Before I start I would like to point out just how cool God is in reminding me to write this blog.

Last night I was talking to my friend, Cam, on skype and in his room he has this cool mural painting of a tree. I was commenting how much I liked it and he was saying how he calls it the tree of life, taking it farther and saying how you can even say its like being at the foot of the cross because Jesus was crucified on a tree.

Enter God's coolness:

Earlier in the week after a particularly hard and hot run I layed down in my front yard when I was done, at the base of this tree that is in our front yard.  I was praying and just laying, talking to God, saying how I wanted to surrender everything daily at the foot of the cross and thinking how cool it was that I was laying by a tree so I could literally surrender the things I struggle with at the foot of "the cross". 

How neat that God placed that similar thought in both mine and Cam's mind and used him to remind me of that! Man oh man do we have a personal God!!

I was listening to the radio in the car the other day and heard one of the talk show people say, "we don't pray to get things from God, we pray to experience that intimate closeness with Him that comes only in that secluded time alone with Him"  I had a verbal response of "mm hmm!!" and really like the picture that painted.  It made sense to me why I felt close to God in that moment under the tree, and any time I spend true, uniterrupted, non-distraction time with the Lord.  His strong desire is for us to desire Him. 

Today, on my run, I was thinking of the significance of a tree in the Bible.  One of the first stories in the Bible centers around a tree in the garden of Eden.  God forbade Adam and Eve from eating from the tree in the middle of the garden.  "The woman said to the serpent, "We may eat the fruit from the trees in the garden.  But about the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden, God said, 'You must not eat it or touch it, or you will die.'" (Genesis 3:2)  Because Eve was deceived by Satan in the garden, she ate from the tree, resulting in death for God said, "Since man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil, he must not reach out, and also take from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever." (Genesis 3:22)  God is so gracious; however, that He sent His only Son to die on a cross, a tree, for our sins.  The same object that brought us into death is the same object Christ died on to deliver us into life.  A tree.  Takes on a whole heavier meaning now huh?  What are you surrendering today?

"and He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness; for by His wounds you were healed."

 - 1 Peter 2:24

"If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?"

 - Matthew 16:24-26