palm trees in heaven?
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"SYMBOLISM OF PALM TREES NEXT..."
It all started during my regular cruise through the Bible. You know, that daily reading thing? Well, I just cruise through it, front to back, over and over again - eventually, anyway. So I just happened to be reading Ezekiel 40 one bright and sunny day and Ezekiel has this vision...
A guy who looks like bronze (no, really, like bronze) shows Ezekiel the temple area, first the east gate to the outer court, then the outer court, then the north gate, and so on. Mr. Bronze has a measuring stick and is measuring all these rooms for Ezekiel and Ezekiel dutifully tells us all the dimesions of these rooms. I'm thinking that this is an unusually slow day's worth of reading when I begin to notice something: each room is described in painfully measured detail, so long by so wide by so high, blah blah blah and then, "The doorjambs between the alcoves were decorated with palm trees." No really - boring measurements, then a little detail about decoration, the same decoration, six times over - go look it up for yourself.
The vision continues on through Ezekiel 41 and then in Ezekiel 43:7, "This is the place I will live with the Israelites forever." (That's God speaking.) I find this utterly facinating. God is showing Ezekiel his holy temple where he'll live forever, so that's on the New Earth, and he bothers to mention decorating the place with palm trees. Six times.
So being slightly obsessed with trees (you can see my Tree Stories blog by looking at my profile) I look up the significance of palm trees to Jews. I discover it has been a symbol of Judah and - drum roll, please - a symbol for the tree of life. The tree of life that was planted in Eden and is now in "the paradise of God" and will be alongside the river flowing out of the temple in the New Jerusalem. Pretty cool, huh?
I've decided to make the palm tree my own recurring theme for all my Heaven artwork, most likely always up the sides of my images, like the carvings on the temple doorposts. And no doubt, a few will show up in my photos, as they already have.
