「我所作的，你如今不曉得，後來必明白。」－約翰福音13:7
上到黎巴嫩山頂，眺望那些挺拔的香柏木吧！
它是群樹中的王者，是北風長年的對手；夏天看見它時總是笑吟吟的，夜晚愛在它的枝葉上遺留露珠，鳥兒喜歡躲在它的枝頭上遮蔽風雨，疲倦的旅客、遊走的牧童也會在其蔭下歇腿乘涼。
儘管如此，總有一天香柏木還是避不開遭砍伐的命運；原以為能終年安居的香柏樹，註定要命喪樵夫手裡。
利斧無情地在一節節的樹幹上留下傷口，樹枝嘩啦啦落在地上；終於「神的樹」砰然倒地。
人們見到如此對大自然的殺戮與掠奪，不禁一個個掩面嘆息，像從前的先知哀聲連連：「松樹啊，應當哀號，因為香柏木傾倒了」！
然而，且慢！讓我們跟著希蘭伐木工的腳步。隨他們將大樹運下山來，延著海路一路飄向深藍的地中海；最後，香柏木竟成了立在神殿中榮美燦耀的柱子。
若我們事先看見香柏樹的命運，得知它將如一顆寶石，收藏於高貴的所在，我們就不會因著它的倒下而嘆息了。固然它能廣大的森林中傲視群雄，但「這殿後來的榮耀必大過先前的榮耀」。
我們許多的生命正像這株香柏木一樣，神試煉的斧頭使我們一無所有。
我們不明白如今所身處黑暗奧秘的處境，但這一切神都有祂的目的；祂要藉著嚴厲的斧頭預備我們，成為錫安城中的棟樑，要我們「在耶和華的手中作華美的冠冕，在你神的掌上作君王的冕旒。」（以賽亞書62:3）。
－馬克特夫
"What I do thou knowest not now, but thou shalt know hereafter" (John 13:7).We have only a partial view here of God's dealings, His half-completed, half-developed plan; but all will stand out in fair and graceful proportions in the great finished Temple of Eternity! Go, in the reign of Israel's greatest king, to the heights of Lebanon. See that noble cedar, the pride of its compeers, an old wrestler with northern blasts! Summer loves to smile upon it, night spangles its feathery foliage with dewdrops, the birds nestle on its branches, the weary pilgrim or wandering shepherd reposes under its shadows from the midday heat or from the furious storm; but all at once it is marked out to fall; The aged denizen of the forest is doomed to succumb to the woodman's stroke!
As we see the axe making its first gash on its gnarled trunk, then the noble limbs stripped of their branches, and at last the "Tree of God," as was its distinctive epithet, coming with a crash to the ground, we exclaim against the wanton destruction, the demolition of this proud pillar in the temple of nature. We are tempted to cry with the prophet, as if inviting the sympathy of every lowlier stem--invoking inanimate things to resent the affront--"Howl, fir tree; for the cedar has fallen!"
But wait a little. Follow that gigantic trunk as the workmen of Hiram launch it down the mountain side; thence conveyed in rafts along the blue waters of the Mediterranean; and last of all, behold it set a glorious polished beam in the Temple of God. As you see its destination, placed in the very Holy of Holies, in the diadem of the Great King--say, can you grudge that "the crown of Lebanon" was despoiled, in order that this jewel might have so noble a setting?
That cedar stood as a stately prop in Nature's sanctuary, but "the glory of the latter house was greater than the glory of the former!"
How many of our souls are like these cedars of old! God's axes of trial have stripped and bared them. We see no reason for dealings so dark and mysterious, but He has a noble end and object in view; to set them as everlasting pillars and rafters in His Heavenly Zion; to make them a "crown of glory in the hand of the Lord, and a royal diadem in the hand of our God." --Macduff
