O CHRIST’S TREE

(The Evergreen tree that truly honors Jesus)

Noble trees of the Mount of OLIVES!
Your groves take their stand for Jah’s might
Your attributes I humbly covet
For you bear up to harshness despite
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In climes hot dusty and harsh
In rocky soil upon the steep hillsides
Your roots clench with strength and vigor
Your trunk gnarled and ashen outside
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Your bushy lush treetop foliage
Leaves slender with a grey-green sheen
All droughts you take in great stride
Who would guess you’re an evergreen?
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Your life can span hundreds of years
Six shoots will soon appear from your roots
Even if cut down in your prime
In ten years each will bear choice fruit
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Your fruit is an olive-green berry
So bitter until soaked in a brine
Then delicious when pickled or stuffed
Or fine oil when pressed like grape wine
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How I, a ‘wild branch’ of your family
Want so much to be just like you
You’ve been cultivated watered and pruned
O the majestic ways you’ve been used!
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Your leaves were returned to Noah
By a dove when God’s flood had receded
Your branches were used to build booths
Which Israel’s yearly festivals needed
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In a vision Zechariah saw two of you
‘Standing alongside the LORD’
You stand as ‘witnesses’ of Him on the earth
Symbol of the Anointed above in His court

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Often upon the Mount of Olives
In the pleasant groves of Gethsemane
Which means ‘oil press’ in Aramaic
Jesus prayed among you, it’s mentioned
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There the carpenter taught disciples
And among your trees slept many nights
There he explained the ‘signs of his presence’
In a future time fraught with fright
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He made his humble entrance
Over the slopes of your thick orchards
Astride the bony back of a little colt
To accept a crown of thorns and torture
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At his death all of you must have wilted
Your olives shriveled and fell off
Your branches must have drooped in sorrow
The wind howled and wailed bereft

*

O Olive trees you saw such a wonder!
Because Jesus appeared as out of the blue
Walked among your groves not long after
And to heaven with angels he flew!
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Let me join you, blessed trees
Upon those grand slopes of Mount Olive
Among the lofty groves in Gethsemane
All my soul and heart I would give
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Lop off ungrateful and barren boughs
Refusing to bear good first fruit
Wild branch that I am, please graft me in!
My yield will be everlasting tribute
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I yearn to be one of Christ’s Trees
Decorated only in Holy splendor
A fulsome Olive Tree– a ‘witness’ tree
Standing tall for the Son and his LORD

By Jahgirl

03/07/14