Planted, Not Striving

The first picture the Psalter shows us is not of a man straining, but of a tree standing. He has been planted — not self-sown, not scattered there by accident, but set deliberately beside running water. Notice the verb. He did not plant himself. Another hand put him here, and underground, where no one is watching, his roots are drinking. That is the whole secret of his green. He is not asked to manufacture his leaf or summon his fruit. He is asked only to stay where he has been planted, and the stream will do the rest. Fruit comes in its season — not every season, not on schedule, but surely. His leaf does not wither, because the water that feeds him will not run dry. The righteous life is not white-knuckled. It is hidden. It is fed. It is given.

There is one Tree planted beside these waters who never let go of a single leaf. In the dry ground of our world, in the soil of our curse, the Lord Jesus stood and bore fruit in every season — even the season the rest of us would call death. He is the green Tree by the river of God, and He is also the dry Tree on which our curse was hung, that the leaves of His healing might come at last to the nations. We do not stand beside Him as another planting; we are grafted in. His roots become our roots. The Spirit He pours out is the stream that does not fail. So the church's fruit is never her own ingenuity, never the strain of her own will. It is sap drawn up from a crucified and risen Lord, and it will come — in its season.