Hello, everyone, and welcome to Speaking with Joy, a podcast to fill your soul, challenge your mind, and make you brave.

I'm your host, Joy Clarkson, and an evangelist for all things good, true, and beautiful.

So make yourself a cup of tea, find somewhere comfortable, and let's dive in to this week's episode. For you did not receive the spirit of bondage

again to fear, but you received the spirit of adoption by whom we cry out,

Abba, Father. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to speaking with joy. I am so excited to share with you

the second part of my conversation with Trevor Hart on the topic of metaphors. Last week, we talked literarily and practically how metaphors

shape our entire thinking about life and our almost every act of speech and even of thinking.

But this week, we delve into the theological. I discussed with Trevor the ways in which metaphor functions for us

theologically, different kinds of metaphor, the metaphors that are offered to us in Revelation,

in Scripture, and those which we kind of use to think about in the world. And particularly,

we discussed at the end why the metaphor of God as father or as parent is one of the most fundamental

in the Christian faith, why it matters to have that at the heart of how we think about God

and our relationship to God. Trevor is simply a pleasure to talk to. It was one of my

very favorite conversations, though I feel

like I say that often. And it's a fitting way to conclude this series in my discussion of metaphors

for my book, You Are a Tree. As a little celebration of the conclusion of this podcast series,

I'm going to do something which is perhaps a little bit silly, but I think

also a little bit profound, which is that I want to ask each one of you as listeners,

if you are a tree, which my book suggests that that's one of the ways we can think about

ourselves, one of the ways that scripture and poetry throughout history has described

the human person. If you are a tree,

what kind of tree are you? And I want to hear your answers to this. I will post something on

...