Why The Weeping Willow Weeps
A small palm tree by the river communicated with the weeping willow next to it through their roots deep in the ground, as trees do with each other. It asked the weeping willow why its leaves drooped toward the ground and why it was crying. The weeping willow replied, “In the beginning of the world, the Great Creator, who made everything, called my original ancestor a majestic tree in His book of life. My ancestor was the tree of life, the Creator planted in very center of Eden and its limbs stood strong and tall loaded with the delicious fruit of eternal life on them. When Adam rejected the fruit of the tree of life and chose the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, my ancestor’s limbs went limp, fell downward, and then the tree began to weep and cry like me, so that his limbs and precious fruit started falling to the ground and left forever. The Great Creator then took a branch from it and planted it by a small stream when He removed the garden in Eden after Adam’s sin and curse infected all of the earth. The Great Creator told the transplanted willow that; henceforth, it and all like it would weep and cry by the rivers and streams of the earth. That they would weep because of the sin of man; but, that one of my ancestors would play a role in rescue of mankind from their sin and rebellion.
About four thousand years later, after the willows had spread around the earth, one of the large willows was cut down by evil men to use the wood to make a cross of death for the Son of the Great Creator. The cross was for Him to die upon as the Savior of mankind to rescue the whole creation when He came back from death and returned to Heaven. This caused the Great Creator to be able forgive mankind if they would just believe in Him and what He did. The Great Creator told my ancestor that the Creator will come back from Heaven someday to a new earth He will create free from the curse of the old one. And as part of this new creation He will plant and grow the original willow from a limb of it that He saved in Heaven before Adam and Eve committed sin, which saved the limb from the curse of sin. Through the revived and replanted ancestor willow tree limb, the willow will again stand as the recreated and renewed willow tree strong and tall as its limbs stretch upward toward the sky and the willow will look like the first willow in Eden on this new earth. The willow, as the eternal tree of life with new fruit, will stand by the river of life of the Great Creator. All of the people of the new earth will eat of the twelve fruits of the tree and the leaves of the tree of life and drink of the water of the river of life forever.
End Note: This poem story is loosely based on the framework of Biblical history and prophecy with some fiction added in for the benefit of the story. Concerning the willow, the Bible in Leviticus 23:40, says, “Now on the first day you shall take for yourselves the foliage of beautiful trees, palm branches and boughs of leafy trees and willows of the brook; and you shall rejoice before the Lord your God for seven days.” In Ezekiel 17:5, it says, “He also took some of the seed of the land and planted it in fertile soil. He placed it beside abundant waters; he set it like a willow.” Revelation 22:2 says, “....And on either side of the river [of life] was the tree of life, bearing twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit every month; and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.” Although, Bible history and prophecy does not support the above story that the tree of life was or would be a willow, it also does not rule it out. Also, the Bible does not support the cross being made of a willow tree, but it also doesn’t rule it out.
