Out on a Limb

English preacher John Scotland often says at his meetings, “For those of you taking notes…save the trees.” This is meant to be a humorous jab at people who jot down too many notes during church services. 

Sadly there are environmentalists who do ridiculous things like chain themselves to trees they don’t want chopped down. In this creepy YouTube clip, members of a radical advocacy group are hysterically bawling over dead trees…  

Tree huggers who really want to take their cause to the extreme shouldn’t read books, live in wooden houses with wooden furniture or use paper money, Kleenex and toilet paper. If God valued trees as much as humans, He wouldn’t have told Noah to built an ark out of gopher wood (Genesis 6:14) or instructed His people to use wood for various sacrifices.

God is certainly not worried about earthly shortages. One time I was driving through Yellowstone National Park and saw a mountain range with a huge amount of trees. At that moment, the Lord spoke to my heart and reminded me of how He has supplied the earth with an abundance of natural resources.  

Yet some folks have this idea that trees are an endangered species. While in elementary school during the 1970s, I was taught a poem that went something like this…

Oh, can’t you plainly see?

That we are running out of trees?

Chop! That was the last one.

It was also around this time I watched an animated TV special called “The Lorax”, based on a Dr. Seuss book of the same name. The title character kept saying he “speaks for the trees.” A motion picture based on the book later came out in 2012. It was one of the top grossing movies of that year.

For any environmentalists reading this, please note that the Son of God died on a tree but not for a tree. When you stand before His throne, He won’t ask about how many trees you saved but if you yourself are saved.

“Men, why are you doing these things? We also are men with the same nature as you, and preach to you that you should turn from these useless things to the living God, who made the heaven, the earth, the sea, and all things that are in them.” - Acts 14:15