Thought of the Day 01.01.08

Imagine that you are a majestic pine tree, and one day the forest ranger posts a notice in the grove which reads:

“From henceforth,
Thou shalt not grow green needles, but thou shalt grow leaves which change color and fall off in winter.
Thou shalt not grow thine branches in the shape of a triangle, but thou shalt grow them in the shape of a circle.
Thine fruit shalt not be brown, hard, and bitter, but shalt be red, soft, and sweet.
All who do not obey shalt be hewn down and thrown into the fire.”

Assuming you want to avoid the fire, there’s a problem. Pine trees simply can’t obey these rules. And only by a miraculous intervention which grafts an apple tree into their wood so that it grows inside them and replaces everything about their current nature, can they ever become the apple trees which cannot fail to obey them.

This, in short, is the message of the Bible. And I don’t know which is more tragic: pine trees struggling to obey the rules…or apple trees encouraging them to just try harder.