Our Daily Bread: A New Life Easter EditionSample

The Tree of Love

The corkscrew willow tree stood vigil over our backyard for more than twenty years. It shaded all four of our children as they played in the yard, and it provided shelter for the neighborhood squirrels. But when springtime came and the tree didn’t awaken from its winter slumber, it was time to bring it down.

Every day for a week I worked on that tree—first to fell it and then to chop two decades of growth into manageable pieces. It gave me a lot of time to think about trees. I thought about the first tree mentioned in the Bible—the one God put in the Garden of Eden and told Adam and Eve not to eat from (Genesis 2:9). God used that tree to test their loyalty and trust. But they just couldn’t resist because “the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom” (3:6 NKJV). And they disobeyed and ate.

But it is a transplanted tree that is most important—the crude wooden cross of Calvary that was cut out of a sturdy tree. There our Savior hung between heaven and earth to bear every sin of every generation on His shoulders. It stands above all trees as a symbol of love, sacrifice, and salvation. At Calvary, God’s only Son suffered a horrible death on a cross. That’s the tree of life for us. —Dave Branon

The cross of Christ reveals man’s sin at its worst and God’s love at its best.