Read Revelation 22:1-5.
The vision in Revelation invites us into hope and spurs us into action. In the world as it will be in that great Someday, the author of Revelation envisions a tree of life that bears fruit in every month of the year. This abundance of food means there is more than enough for everyone. On that tree are leaves that will bring healing to the nations.
Barbara Rossing writes: “Notice the healing comes not directly from God or the Lamb, not from some distant absent future time, but through the actual created world – through the leaves of a living tree. This is another signal of how God loves creation and still calls it good” (The Rapture Exposed: The Message of Hope in the Book of Revelation, Westview 2004, p. 156).
The tree of life will bring healing. Trees already do. After all, it is through trees that this world breathes. Not only do they give us the oxygen we need to breathe; they bring joy in their beauty. There is no way to live, much less thrive, without trees. Our lives are bound up together.
This message is excerpted from the Bible study “Jesus and nature: Teachers of faith” by Sara Olson-Smith in the September/October 2022 Gather magazine. Today we commemorate Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, martyr, c. 115.
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