I am the light of the world
I hope you will read and be blessed by this story of a tree and its relation to man as he reaches out to a lost world.
A seed planted into the ground begins to sprout, and as it does, it reaches for the light to give it life. In John 8:12, Jesus Christ says’ “I am the light of the World.” While the leaves reach for the sunshine, its roots collect water and nutrients to send up the cambium of the tree. (Cambium is the layer between the bark and the wood, and is a white pulpy substance.)
The roots send the nutrients up through the cambium to the part of the tree above the ground, much like our blood vessels carry nutrients through our body. The difference between them is the blood flows through our body, and we grow at an even rate, while a tree grows during seasons. Ecclesiastes 3:1 reads “to everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under Heaven.” Niv
While a tree grows during seasons, each season leaves a ring around the outside of the wood underneath the bark. Each spring as a new cambium starts up the tree, part of the old cambium will make another ring around the wood, and the other part of the cambium will transform into bark. This puts another layer of bark underneath the old bark. The bark is old cambium. Look at the outside of a pine tree, and you will see the jagged craters in the bark, where the activity underneath has stretched the bark, and the bark has split, but the cambium is sealed underneath.
If you chop into the bark of the tree, as you go deeper in your cut, you hit the cambium, which is wet, and pitch will come out to try to heal the wound. Psalms 147:3 reads “He heals the broken hearted, and binds up their wounds.”
As the tree grows, the roots spread out to get more nutrients, and also stabilize the tree as it reaches to get more sunlight that it needs to grow. In a forest a lot of trees are compatible, and their roots will graft into each other, and share the nutrients to a certain extent. Much like our Christian walk, by sharing the word with others, we also share in the benefits. Like the sap that feeds the tree, the Word of God feeds us. We, like the tree, cannot grow unless we, too, look toward the light of of the World.