A couple of weeks ago, I read the first chapter of Psalms, together with a couple of others, during a Saturday morning breakout session at church. The first couple of verses go like this.
“Blessed is the man
who walks not in the counsel of the wicked,
nor stands in the way of sinners,
nor sits in the seat of scoffers;
but his delight is in the law of the Lord,
and on his law he meditates day and night.
He is like a tree
planted by streams of water
that yields its fruit in its season,
and its leaf does not wither….”
Immediately my thoughts drifted back to the summer I spent in California and so many days spent on the Klamath River white water rafting. I saw so many trees along the route. Many looking like this:
And the thing I remember about those trees is the ones that were right along the river, always seemed to be the healthiest. It didn’t matter if they were hanging on the edge, their roots were hanging on. Because they were planted by a flowing stream of water. The river continually moving and providing nourishment to help them to grown stronger and stay alive.
After I left church that Saturday morning, I didn’t really think about it again. That is until I went to Ohio this weekend. I had the chance to visit my cousins for the weekend [which was so incredible. Cousin weekend success]. While I was there, we went on a hike on a trail that went through a gorge along a river. Don’t ask me what river it was, but there was definitely a river that we hiked along. At one point, my cousin, being the adventurous boy that he is, saw a tree growing sideways out of the ground towards the water. He of course went over and started to climb out on it. I noticed the tree didn’t budge under his weight even though it wasn’t a ginormous tree. But it was firmly planted in the ground, with it’s roots digging deep into the ground. Once again, my mind drifted back to these few verses but after the hike, I didn’t think twice about them.
But tonight, as I was reading in the Word, I got to the part in Galatians that talks about the fruit of the Spirit. Typically, I brush past the fruit of the Spirit because I know I fall so short of having these qualities in my life, but since the section of the book I’m reading was all about the fruit of the Spirit, I couldn’t really bypass it. As I continued to read, there was a section that mentioned that fruit can’t make a dead tree produce fruit. It’s impossible. But yet an alive tree enables fruit to grow on it.
Just like my life. I can’t expect fruit to show up in my life if I’m not healthy spiritually. And the only way to be spiritually healthy is to be planting by a flowing stream. By pouring myself over the Living Word daily. To let my roots be saturated by the Living Water. That’s the only way that I’ll be able to be a tree that produces fruit.
And when I think of a fruit tree, I think of it being so inviting. When a fruit tree is truly healthy and blossoming, it draws people in. I think of the fall right now, being the prime time for apple picking. The reason people go to pick apples, is that the trees are blossoming and they invite people in to pick their fruit off. And to be refreshed and make something with it.
And that’s what the desire of my heart is. To be a tree firmly rooted in the Word and healthy that the Spirit bears fruit within me. A fruit that is visible to others and draws people in that they may be refreshed and encouraged to bear fruit in their own lives. To build His kingdom. For His glory.
And the only way I can do that is by planting myself by the streams of Living Water. To spend time with the Lord daily. To pour over His Word and be filled up and saturated by it. To have that be the most important part of my day. Which if I’m honest, hasn’t been the past few weeks. And I miss it. And I want to be a mighty tree shooting out of the hill by the river that people look at and wonder how the heck I’m still hanging on. And I am able to because my roots are planted by the streams of Living Water.
