Tag Archives: Tree of Life

The End is the Beginning

July 19, 2022 Tom Vander Well Leave a comment

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.
Revelation 22:1-2a (NIV)

Three times a week I get a phone call from Storii.com. The robo-lady asks me a random question and then gives me ten minutes to answer. The recordings are then stored on my personal Storii page where family and friends who have their own Storii account can listen. It’s a brilliant idea. I wish I had recordings of my grandparents and great-grandparents to hear their own personal stories in their own voices. How I would love to hear those voices again.

One of the questions that Storii asked me a few weeks ago was the time in my life that I felt most alive. As I have found to be the case with many of Storii’s questions, I had multiple answers. I shared some of them on the recording.

One of the periods I felt most alive is not deemed acceptable to some. It was a period of time after my divorce. Please don’t read what I’m not writing. I consider the failure of my first marriage and all my mistakes that personally contributed to its demise to be the biggest failure of my life (thus far that is, technically I have time and opportunity to top it). I found divorce to be a terrible, death-like experience complete with those who chose to bury their relationships with me.

What I discovered in profound ways after the divorce was the truth of Corrie Ten Boom’s words: “There is no pit so deep, that God’s love is not deeper still.” Out of the ashes of my marital failure, seeds of new life began to germinate.

But that’s what God does. I wrote it yesterday: Death-to-Life is the meta-theme of the Great Story. I don’t follow the God of death. I follow the God of resurrection, redemption, forgiveness, grace, and love.

Today’s chapter is the end of the Great Story. It’s the last chapter in the 39 book volume, and guess where it ends? It ends back at the beginning. John’s vision reveals that the city he began to describe in yesterday’s chapter contains “the river of life” just like the Garden of Eden (Gen 2:10), and on either side of the river stands the Tree of Life just like the Garden of Eden. There is no more curse of sin just like in the Garden of Eden.

The end is the beginning.

Death-to-Life.

The Pheonix rises.

“Ashes-to-ashes” becomes “ashes-to-Life.”

To paraphrase Corrie: “There ain’t no grave so deep…”

We’ve reached the end. Tomorrow, I begin again.

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

Chapter-a-Day

Green God

October 15, 2015 Tom Vander Well Leave a comment

If you besiege a town for a long time, making war against it in order to take it, you must not destroy its trees by wielding an ax against them. Although you may take food from them, you must not cut them down. Are trees in the field human beings that they should come under siege from you? You may destroy only the trees that you know do not produce food; you may cut them down for use in building siegeworks against the town that makes war with you, until it falls.
Deuteronomy 20:19-20 (NRSV)

One of the things that I have quietly gained as a life long fan and student of J.R.R. Tolkien is an appreciation for trees. Tolkien loved trees and his expression of love is woven throughout his works. In his creation story, there are two trees, gold and silver, which produced light. When evil destroys the trees their fruit become the sun and moon.

Throughout the Lord of the Rings you find Tolkien’s love of trees expressed through Old Man Willow, the ents, and through the elves who dwell in the forests and carry the blessings of all things that grow. Those who are evil, like the wizard Saruman and his minions, fell the trees and destroy the forests to fuel their war machine and generally tear down that which is good. As a result, it is the trees embodied by the Ents and the mysterious forest of Huorns who rise up against evil and help usher in an unexpected victory in The Two Towers.

So it is that I read with keen interest God’s command to the ancient Hebrew in today’s chapter. The army was not to fell any tree that was living and bearing fruit. When laying siege to an enemy city, they could eat the fruit of the surrounding trees but were forbidden from cutting them down to use in building siege engines and utensils of war. Only trees which were already dead could be used for such purposes.

I am reminded this morning that our Creator and artist God began His work on earth with a garden, and at the center of the garden He placed a very special tree. The vision of the end given to us in John’s revelation likewise makes special mention of a tree:

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city. On either side of the river is the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.
Revelation 22:1-2

I am not much of a gardener and I often joke of having a “brown thumb.” Yet, along life’s journey I have grown to appreciate that God, like Tolkien, is a gardner and a lover of trees. If I am to be like Him, then I must grow to love, appreciate, and protect gardens and trees and the living things that grow in His creation.

featured image: The Tree of Life , Gustav Klimt

Chapter-a-Day

A Forest of Lessons

January 23, 2015 Tom Vander Well Leave a comment

The tree you saw, which grew large and strong, with its top touching the sky, visible to the whole earth, with beautiful leaves and abundant fruit, providing food for all, giving shelter to the wild animals, and having nesting places in its branches for the birds— Your Majesty, you are that tree!
Daniel 4:20-22 (NIV)

One of the things that I am going to greatly miss here at VW Manor is our mighty oak tree which, we believe, has likely stood sentinel over this property since around the time the Dutch settlers put down their roots in the neighborhood. Each time I drive into the driveway I must be careful to skirt my way around the massive trunk. Its branches have given us shade from the heat of the summer sun. It has wordlessly whispered to my soul regarding permanence, strength, fidelity and my own relative transience.

God has a thing for trees. There was the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in the middle of the Garden of Eden. Psalm 1 kicks off that monster volume of lyrics by describing the blessed person as a “tree, planted by rivers of water, which bears fruit in its season, whose leaf doe not wither.” The book of Revelation describes, at the end of all things, the Tree of Life in the middle of a restored Eden.

This morning I am also mindful of the oak trees that once stood scattered around the yard of our lake house. Spindly and thin, they nonetheless offered a small forest’s worth of shade over the house and guarded those who traversed the hill down to the water’s edge. Over the course of a few summers, one-by-one, each one of them quickly withered and died. Their dead, bare branches stretched out but provided no shade. One by one we cut them down. It called to mind Jesus’ words:

[My Father, the gardener] cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful.

Nebuchadnezzar was a mighty, prosperous, fruitful tree. Yet, he discovered that what takes years to grow can wither very quickly.

Today, I am asking myself, “What kind of tree am I?”