Eternal Family Tree

Written by Janessa Gonzales

As a church, we are currently reading the Bible together, and I love it! There is no place I would rather be than in God's Word daily.  It is exciting to be able to discuss God's word with the people around me. In our reading on Monday we read Proverbs 11.  WOW! What a chapter, so much we can learn. 

But the verse that stuck out to me was Proverbs 11:30.  It says, "The seeds of good deeds become a tree of life; a wise person wins friends." 

The two questions I asked myself were, am I a wise person? Am I winning my friends? Then I went back to the first part: "become a tree of life." Well what does that look like? The thought came to me about my family tree.  When you chart your family tree, most start with Mom and Dad and above them Grandma and Grandpa, with Aunts, Uncles, & Cousins forming branches and limbs.  This may sound morbid, but the fact remains that everyone in our family genealogy will one day die or has already died.  In contrast, this Proverb describes for us a "tree of life."

For the first time, I think I am really understanding the meaning of the first part of Proverbs 11:30, "The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life."  In Romans we read, "As it is written, there is none righteous, no, not one."  The unbeliever is seen as unrighteous, but the believer is seen as righteous because of what Christ did on the cross.  The fruit of the believer is souls (lightbulb!).  It is a believer reproducing himself.  The fruit of a believer would therefore be another believer. So when a believer leads someone to Christ they become a son or daughter in a somewhat spiritual family.  We are in actuality the spiritual parent to those that we lead to Christ (crazy thing to think about). If you lead someone to Christ they become your son or daughter in the Lord.  If they in turn lead someone to Christ, that person becomes your grandson or granddaughter in the Lord.  Christians can become a parent to a whole tree of persons who will live forever, the eternal tree of life. 

I want to have a large spiritual family, a giant tree of life.   I want to be wise in God's sight. I want people to join me on that eternal tree of life. It's a huge job and right now my tree branches are sparse, but this is what God's purpose and call is on our lives. What does your eternal family tree look like?