The Trees of the Garden still stand, always before us,
representing a choice so pivotal as to be -
as they are so named - life or death.

The Tree of Knowledge is a tree of thinking.
We believe by thinking we can know.
"When I think - I think I know.
And I think that whatever I think is . . . true."

We have high opinions of our own opinions. 

SATAN provoked Eve to
think . . . to reason and conclude.
Under the shade of that Tree she thought
intently . . . and then she sinned.
Losing God by deduction.

She considered. On her own, without God.
The enemy dwells in reasoning so when
she "thought," she sat with Him.

God was not in the conversation nor
considered in the equation.
Eve formed her own solution,
without waiting, without listening . . .
merely by thinking. 

To live by thinking is to die.

To solve, to know, to conclude by the means of thinking
is to cease to be in reality, but worse . . .
to live by thinking is to cease to exist!
We exist only as we connect to God and
the connection is made by conversation
that becomes a communion of love . . . .

In the asking, we open and
in the hearing, we are entered.

The lust to know was awakened in Eve and
birthed into her children,
a mania opposed to God.
Eve's children will have answers now
even if we have to make them up.
 
Thinking is the dangerous realm, where in quiet disguise, Satan is
adding his ideas and accusing you of them.

Clever, clever suggestions that provoke a hellish conclusion.

When Peter listened, he heard from the Father in Heaven
the identity of Jesus, while others were still puzzled at the Man.
But when Peter faced the danger for Jesus in
Jerusalem, he began to think about it - instead of listening -
and so became the enemy's spokesman.

Thinking is the realm where Satan has domain and
God isn't involved. You won't find God there.
He doesn't enter into the dialogue of human
considerations of satanic perversions.
God is silent.

Truth is there . . . but it is merely
a smidgen of truth encased in a coffin of lies.
In that dark shadow, the lies become the truth you believe
and the iota of truth, disappears.   

The Tree of Life is the place of listening.
The place where every dilemma
is a question for God to explain,
a thrilling chance to know Him by His answer.

Where bewilderment finds its explanation
and confusion, its order . . .
solely by heeding the Voice,
the One who knows ALL. 

By listening, He is given His place.
The One Who Knows and the Only One who does . . . .

God speaks when we listen but is silent when we think.

Thinking or listening. Choose.
It is absolute and irrefutable that you can't have both.
Each of us lives in one tree or the other.
You do know which tree shelters (feeds) you . . . you know.

If you don't know, taste your fruit.  

Every day presents riddles without clues -
challenges dressed as problems.

Questions rise from needs to know.
"What is this that is happening?"
Mysteries knock on our door and come in uninvited.  

What you do with this is run to a Tree.
Always a Tree.
You have your favorite,
the one you trust. 

At one Tree, you wait. You quietly wait.
Ask the questions and know
they are beyond any of your petty answers.

However long it takes, you wait.
No alternative but His voice. And no substitute.
No activity yields anything (you know this)
so your only solution to anything is
only . . . listening.

The Great Father wants communion by the catalyst of
our natural bewilderment at life.
The Father wants to father . . .

The Listening Tree births Life, the vitality to face it,
and the wisdom to live it.  

At the other Tree, The Thinking Tree,
you inspect, you look at the obvious, you interpret the signs by
an impure imagination that knows only its own inverted heart. 

What you see, you consider and invent your list of explanations
and hear the clever suggestions of hell.
So clever, they convince.

You choose your own truth and nail it on
the signpost of your mind. It has become a proclamation,
an absolute of which you have no doubt.

You even call it God's truth, arrived at . . . without Him. 

You will defend that idea to the death . . .
and so you will.

Copyright © 1999 Martha Blaney Kilpatrick