From the green pole to the tree of life

I am praying that our students will jump from the green pole to the tree of life. From F.F. Trench,

"I've seen a poor blind worm on the top of a slender pole stretching every ring of its fragile form and groping all around in vacant space tingling with impatience to climb higher but doomed to stop at the top of the pole. It was a caterpillar whom a rough wind had shaken from the green tree where it was quietly feeding, and when it found itself on the hard ground it wandered about in dry places seeking rest and finding none till it reached the bottom of this wall, the foot of this pole and then it climbed. But, you see, it has made nothing of it. The green painted pole has a very different thing...is a very different thing from the leafy tree it used to live in. Poor creature. It's hungry and the reason why it runs along and stretches upward so anxiously is if happily it might find the juicy foliage it once fed on. It will never find it there. Up among the branches of the tree of life man once had his home, his resting place. And there he fed sweetly. But a rough storm of temptation shook him down, the fall of man, and now he runs about among the dry places seeking rest and finding none. And you will sometimes find him, poor groveling worm, poor fallen man, trying to better himself by climbing up some painted pole and once he gains its top you will see him exploring blindly around in emptiness, feeling for some higher object on which to rest, some green thing for his hungry soul to feed on, pivoting and balancing himself and stretching outward and stretching upward. But the tree of life is not there until it comes to live on God Himself, the hungry soul of man will never be satisfied."