Only God Can Make A Tree

In my reading of RJ Rushdoony's commentary on Deuteronomy today, I came across this gem of a passage. He was commenting on the "forty years of schooling in the wilderness" that Israel experienced and quoted from Joseph Parker:

Time has a good deal to do with testimony; time enters very subtly into all things human and mundane. Men may make a ladder in a very short time, but who can make a tree? – and how constantly we are mistaking a tree for a ladder, or a ladder for a tree! Time makes the tree; time makes character; time makes practical theology.*

Rushdoony goes on to comment, "We sometimes forget this factor of time, of history, as we work with our children."**

To all Christian parents, and to those homeschooling particularly, we must view our endeavor from heaven's eyes, patiently laboring as our saplings mature into the trees God intends.

*Joseph Parker, The People’s Bible, vol. 4, Numbers 27 – Deuteronomy (New York. NY: Funk & Wagnealls, n.d.), 85.
**RJ Rushdoony, Deuteronomy (Vallecito, CA: Ross House Books, 2008), 24.