You Won’t Find the Tree of Life by Going Backward

This morning I was reading Proverbs 3 when I came to verse 18:

“She is a tree of life to them that lay hold upon her: and happy is every one that retaineth her.”

The “she” in this verse is wisdom.

And for some reason, I couldn’t move past those words.

A tree of life.

I immediately thought about the Garden of Eden. About Adam and Eve leaving the garden. About the cherubim and the flaming sword placed there to guard the way to the tree of life.

And then I had this thought:

We cannot find the tree of life by going backward.

I don't know why that hit me so hard this morning, but it did.

Because I think sometimes I try.

Maybe you do too.

We go backward in our minds and replay conversations, wondering what we should have said differently.

We go back to relationships and try to figure out the exact moment everything changed.

We go back to decisions we made when we didn't know what we know now.

We go back to the diagnosis. The betrayal. The loss. The unanswered prayer. The season when we were barely surviving and wonder if somehow we missed God there.

If I had known then what I know now...

If I had listened sooner...

If I hadn't trusted that person...

If I had noticed the signs...

If I had prayed harder...

If I had made a different choice...

Maybe.

But we can't live there.

And this morning I wondered if perhaps wisdom is God's way of teaching us how to move forward without pretending the past didn't happen.

Proverbs doesn't tell us that wisdom will take us back to the garden.

It tells us wisdom becomes a tree of life to us.

I love that distinction.

Because God doesn't waste what we have learned.

Not even the painful parts.

Especially, perhaps, the painful parts.

There are things I know about God today that I only know because I walked through something I desperately wished He would take away.

There are things I know about myself because something fell apart.

There are prayers I learned to pray because the prayers I had been praying weren't changing the circumstance.

There are places where I stopped needing God to explain Himself and started learning how to trust Him instead.

I wouldn't have chosen some of those lessons.

Actually, I know I wouldn't have.

But I can see now how they gave me wisdom.

And Proverbs 3 reminded me this morning that true wisdom isn't simply collecting more information. It begins with a relationship with God.

A few verses earlier we read words many of us know by heart:

“Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.”

I have quoted that scripture for years.

But it reads differently when there are things in your life you genuinely don't understand.

Trust sounds beautiful until God asks you to do it without an explanation.

Until the relationship doesn't work out.

Until someone you love leaves.

Until the prayer isn't answered the way you thought it would be.

Until the life you carefully planned looks nothing like the life you are actually living.

That is where wisdom becomes more than knowing.

It becomes relationship.

It becomes knowing God well enough to say, “I don't understand this, but I know You.”

And maybe that is what I am learning.

The goal isn't to get back to who I was before life happened.

I don't think God is asking me to return to some untouched version of myself.

He is inviting me forward.

Forward with more compassion.

Forward with more discernment.

Forward with scars and questions and experiences I didn't ask for.

Forward knowing things about Him I couldn't have learned any other way.

I think sometimes we believe healing means getting back to the person we used to be.

But what if healing isn't backward?

What if it is forward?

What if God isn't trying to return us to the garden at all?

What if He is teaching us how to walk toward the tree of life?

That thought changed Proverbs 3:18 for me this morning.

Wisdom is not just knowing what to do next.

Wisdom is knowing Who to walk with next.

And today, I don't need to know the entire path.

I don't need to rewrite yesterday.

I don't need to figure out how everything should have happened differently.

I can take what I have learned, place my hand in His, and keep moving forward.

Because perhaps the tree of life was never behind me.

Perhaps God has been leading me toward it all along.