Today we’re going to tell a story that we have told before. It is a story dear to the heart of many of us at The Master’s Craft, and we hope it is near to your heart as well.

It is a story of love and life illustrated time and again through history, with trees in the supporting role.

It begins with two trees.

One was the tree of life. The other bore the forbidden fruit that unlocked the knowledge of good and evil… something the first couple were blissfully unaware of until they gave in to temptation. The world hasn’t been the same since.

The story continues with gopher wood. The world was evil and God sent a flood. The wooden ark housed two of every animal along with a family saved from the waters.

There was the time when a man named Abraham climbed up a mountain with his promised son. The wooden sticks were laid down to sacrifice Isaac upon.

But that was not the plan.

God provided a substitute.

With no room in the inn for the census, a young couple spent the evening in the stables where a baby was born and laid in a wooden feeding trough.

A young boy learned how to craft wood into useful and beautiful things. The trade he learned was carpentry, but that wasn’t the ultimate calling for his life.

Out in a wooden fishing boat, on the sea, the winds and waves raged. Panic arose with the men who were on this boat; well, all but one.

All he had to do was say, “Peace, be still,” and the winds and rain obeyed.

It was a cruel punishment, but many were executed in the Roman Empire on crosses made of wood. The carpenter boy who grew up to teach, who could command the storm to be still, hung on that cross.

In this act of love, Christ became the one who would absolve the curse that resulted from the forbidden fruit.

He was the ark that sheltered us from the wrath of a holy God. Christ took it on himself to be the substitute laid on the pile of sticks, the required sacrifice to satisfy the payment for sin.

That day the truest love story was told: forgiveness and love nailed on a tree.

Most stories have a happy ending, and this one certainly does – when love becomes our tree of life. The Master Craftsman reveals his story to us with the beauty of his own creation.

This is our story at The Master’s Craft, a story of love and trees.

Continue reading in the next two stories, The Floorman and Marked by a Nail.