Big Trees
God promised His own people to give them beauty in place of the ashes of a burnt out (ruined) life. He promised praise instead of heaviness or sorrow, joy in place of mourning. Why will God make such a difference in a life? Isaiah 61:3 reads, Athat they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the LORD, that He might be glorified.@
Perhaps the mightiest of created living things
is the giant sequoia or Sierra Big Tree of Nevada. The lowest branch of some
of these trees would stretch out over the top of a 12-story building. The General Sherman
is usually considered the all-round example of these giant trees. It is 272 feet high and
102 feet around. At 16 feet above its base it is 214 feet in diameter and has no branches
for 130 feet.
In a different sequoia grove lies a tree called the Father of the Forest. A man once rode horseback inside its hollow trunk without having to bend his head! Indications are that it was once 400 feet high, which would have made it the tallest tree in the world. Ring counts suggest that some of the trees have lived 3100 yearsBthirty centuries! Alive before our Lord Jesus walked the earth.
Why do these trees live so long? If there is any one answer, it lies in the very sap of life itself. The sap of the big trees is
only slightly flammable. Though fire is a deadly danger to thin-barked young sequoias,
when the bark has formed on older trees it may be a foot or more thick and practically as
fire resistance as asbestos. The sap has also a healing action that begins at once to
repair a wound. It is highly antiseptic, deadly to the spores of fungus.
Giant treesBwhat lesson can we learn from these? God made them. God made them from tiny, tiny seedsBseeds so small it takes 3000 of them to make one ounce. God can take people when they are small in their own eyes, and when they know Him as their Lord He can make them to grow into giantsBtrees of rightness, the planting of the Lord that He might be glorified.
The secret of the big tree is in the sapBon the inside. The secret of the men and women God uses is in the inside, too. David was a little shepherd boy, unimportant to the family. Moses became a shepherd in the desert. Peter was a fisherman. Their secret was on the inside. They possessed the life of God, eternal life through faith. Their faith was in the living, victorious Son of God, Who died for our sins and arose from the grave.
Possessing eternal life, the life of God, they became protected from and resistant to the fires of life and the fires of hell. They became unaffected by the disease of sin and corruption in the world.
God alone can give everlasting life. God alone can give perfect inner health, spiritual health. God alone can make a giant. Have you found everlasting life in Christ?
AHe that hath the Son hath life;
and he that hath not the Son of
God hath not life.@
1 John 5:12
Yield your life to God that He might make you a giant for Him.
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