“Let the fields be jubilant, and everything in them; let all the trees of the forest sing for joy.” Psalm 96:12 (NIV)

Trees

As I read this prayer from the December 10 devotional: “Father, Your indescribable love sent Your Son to earth as a babe in a manger to show us the way to You. Jesus willingly paid our “price into heaven” by giving His blood on that old, rugged, splintered cross”…. I thought about the fact that His life started out in a little wooden box and ended on a big wooden cross. One a place of humility, the other considered a place of shame. That is how much God loves us. He was willing to send His Exalted Son in the most undignified ways to bring us back to Him.

As part of my healing journey, the Lord showed me a vision once of myself as a little girl in the midst of a clearing of trees. There was snow on the ground, the wind was blowing, and I was standing by a little fire in a dress with knee high socks and a little coat and hat with fur around the edges. I had my coat open and was straining into the wind trying to protect a very small tree.

This little tree turned out to be the image of Jesus I had in my head. I had reduced Him to the Babe so I could wrap my head around things that had happened to me in my childhood. Jesus must have been too small and helpless to rescue me. That seemed a far better thought than He was big and strong enough, and He let it happen anyway.

I’m don’t remember exactly what happened next. I let go of something (I imagine it was unforgiveness against man and God) and all of a sudden the little tree shot up as a magnificent, towering, sheltering tree, high above all the other trees in the forest. Jesus always had been big enough, but sometimes with the evil in the world, for whatever reason, God allows things to happen. I need to look at Jesus on the cross to know that.

God chose a brutal death for His Son to bring reconciliation between us and Him, and as He knows the end from the beginning, I have to trust Him no matter what it looks like to my human eyes.

As Christmas draws near this year, we decided to get a live tree, one we’ll plant in the backyard once the holidays are over. It’s a Vanderwolf pine and it just looks joyful. The needles are soft and it appears to be reaching toward the sky in worship. It brings a smile to my face every time I look at it.

Father God, thank You for Your Son. Thank You for the trees which were with Him at the beginning and end of His life, and thank You for the joyous reminder our Christmas tree has brought. Amen.”