It is my favorite time of the year - spring!  Some people watch with anticipation for the first robin, or the first buttercup, but  I daily find myself looking expectantly toward the tops of the trees, searching them for that faint lacy-green color that indicates the uncurling of the first leaves.  Watching the tiny baby leaves appear on the trees each year is somewhat akin to watching a resurrection for me.  It fills my soul with a hope of one day awakening from the cold winter's sleep of death to a glorious everlasting spring.  

The trees that we see each day are a testimony of God's love and mercy toward sinful man. In fact, trees are always in the background of the Gospel story. It was because Eve and Adam ate of the The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil that mankind fell into sin (Genesis 3).

And though God cast the first couple out of the Garden of Eden to keep them from eating of the Tree of Life, and living forever, the trees of the  world continued to lift their boughs to point fallen man back to God. The Bible says that trees rejoice (Psalm 96:12), and sing (Isaiah 44:23), and even clap their limbs (Isaiah 55:12) in praise and worship of their Creator.

But sadly, it was a tree that held that same Creator one dark day as He shed his blood for the sins of all the world. "He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed." (I Peter 2:24) It had to be a tree, because "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: "Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree." (Galatians 3:13)

Because of the sacrifice of Jesus, man will one day eat again of the Tree of Life and he will live forever because the curse of sin has been removed! (Revelation 22:2,3)