Choose the best tree

Walking in our neighborhood this morning, I passed this swing hanging from a tree. I thought immediately of the swing my wife and I built for our granddaughter when she was old enough to sit in one.

We checked the consumer reports and safety ratings thoroughly. I purchased a chain at the local hardware store guaranteed to hold ten times her weight. We secured the chain to the swing with duplicating knots and attachments.

But if we had then hung the swing from a limb incapable of supporting her weight, all our efforts would have been for naught.

Here’s the point: choose the right “tree” from which to suspend your “swing.”

• You can trust the crowds, but remember that they shouted for Jesus’ crucifixion.
• You can trust material wealth, but God warns us to “keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have” (Hebrews 13:5).
• You can trust yourself, but “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23).

Here was Paul’s “tree”: “I know whom I have believed, and I am convinced that he is able to guard until that day what has been entrusted to me” (2 Timothy 1:12).

What “tree” are you trusting today?