What Kind of Tree Are You? Wednesday, Holy Week

"Cursed is he who trusts in man…And turns his thoughts from the LORD. He shall be like a bush in the desert…It is set in the scorched places of the wilderness, In a barren land without inhabitant. Blessed is he who trusts in the LORD…He shall be like a tree planted by waters… It has no care in a year of drought, It does not cease to yield fruit.” (Jeremiah 17:5-8)

In Jeremiah’s prophecy the withered bush in the desert, and the tree planted by water, have one thing in common. They are both planted, by someone else. In this case, Jeremiah seems to be saying that those who are like withered shrubs have given themselves over to human beings. They have let human beings plant them. The trees, on the other hand, have trusted in the LORD God, and have let God plant them.

But did not the bush and the tree have some freedom to decide where they would be planted. Those who were like bushes in the desert turned from God, and that is a movement, which plants can’t do. So, whether you’re a bush or a tree would seem to depend on your choice of who to trust, sinful humans or God.

In his book, The Four Loves, C.S. Lewis writes that God plants in each of us a garden, which is our human nature. Without God’s grace, coming down like rain and sunshine, we all wither. But God also gives us the ability and the will to “dress” our garden, Lewis concludes, through the work of prayer and the pruning of self-examination.

As we “dress” the garden that has been planted within us, and around us, let us never forget that Jesus did the same. At the beginning of John’s Gospel, we hear that “the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.” The Greek word translated “dwelt” literally means to “pitch your tent.” In the Eugene Peterson paraphrase, The Message, we hear that the Word “moved into the neighborhood.”

Jesus laid down his roots among us. He placed his trust in the rain and sunshine of his Father’s grace. And when it came time for him to be pruned, he trusted. When it came time for his seed to die, he trusted that it would bear much fruit. Whatever pruning God asks of us is not as bad as the pruning Jesus endured. Whatever is in us that needs to die is not as terrible as the death that Jesus endured.

So, in the words of that obnoxious get-to-know-you question, what kind of tree are you?