Yes, Jeremiah, The Tree Has Power
With apologies to Francis B. Church.
Hear what the Lord says to you, people of Israel. This is what the Lord says:
“Do not learn the ways of the nations or be terrified by signs in the heavens, though the nations are terrified by them. For the practices of the peoples are worthless;
they cut a tree out of the forest, and a craftsman shapes it with his chisel.
They adorn it with silver and gold;
they fasten it with hammer and nails so it will not totter.
Like a scarecrow in a cucumber field, their idols cannot speak;
they must be carried because they cannot walk.
Do not fear them; they can do no harm
nor can they do any good.”Jeremiah 10:1-5 (New International Version)
Jeremiah, this revelation of yours is wrong. You do not understand the harm or good that idols can do, but truths exist beyond what you can comprehend. All minds, Jeremiah, whether or not they are receiving the word of the Lord, are little. In this great civilization of ours, man is a mere insect in his intellect, just as a single ant could never comprehend the colony.
Yes, Jeremiah, those trees, cut down and adorned with silver and gold, are yet alive. They speak as certainly as love and generosity and devotion speak, and the peoples of the nations hear them. How dreary would our world be, if nothing we created had a soul? It would be as dreary as a world without prophets like you. We need our symbols, our constructs, our traditions—but they’re so much more interesting when they come to life, when they express a meaning we didn’t realize we were imbuing them with.
“Do not fear” the idol? Maybe you haven’t foreseen this, but in 2500 years, one person in three will be a follower of what you now preach. And yet, almost all of them will, on the day they celebrate the Messiah, still place offerings before a tree decked with silver and gold. That is power, stronger than any movement or revelation. Eventually they won’t even bother, as the nations in your time do, to carve the tree into the image of a God. Instead, they’ll choose a tree known for staying green even in the coldest winter, and hear it in their hearts when the tree speaks of resilience and hope.
You are wise to judge idols by their effects, but effects can be subtle. Idols may not perform the simple, physical miracles you speak of, but they act and move in higher dimensions. As a prophet like you will someday say, they are beings not of flesh and blood, but of power and principality. What could be more real than that?
Why have they aroused my anger with their images,
with their worthless foreign idols?The harvest is past,
the summer has ended,
and we are not saved.Since my people are crushed, I am crushed.
I mourn, and horror grips me.
Is there no balm in Gilead?Jeremiah 8:19-22
Yes, Jeremiah, there is balm in Gilead. In my time, Gilead, after Lebanon, cares for more refugees per capita than anywhere else in the world. They struggle under the weight, but continue to bear it. And today, with the summer and harvest over, an annual miracle is helping.
“Cannot walk”! The ornamented tree has traveled everywhere your words have reached, and will do so for a thousand years after the rest is forgotten. We will travel to other worlds, become different kinds of beings, and still, the tree will follow us, carried on our backs. Every year, we will strive to understand its true meaning, and in that meaning, we will find each other.