Deep Roots

Psalm 1 is appropriately the 1st Psalm because of what it talks about. It addresses the difference between the righteous and the wicked. As I think back when I first encountered this Psalm, it was in 6th grade. I remember memorizing and memorizing large portions of scripture as an 11 year old because I wanted to be the honor student for my 6th grade class at my church. There was this tremendous and insatiable drive to learn scripture and to plant it in my heart. Psalm 1 was one of these scriptures. I was so tender at the time and just wanted to be like Jesus. This was the time in my life that I remember wrestling with the reality of God. Was he real? Who wrote the scripture? Why did my grandmother die? Was I valuable? Could I be a man? These were all questions I was asking.

I see in the Psalm an image. I am not an artist that draws, but in my mind I have a painted picture scene of a tree and a stream that flows briskly by the giant stable tree. It is getting ready to bear fruit, but it isn’t quite there. It has a potential that is off the charts. It is primed and ready, but the preparation to bear fruit in season is a slow process. It takes a long time to grow a tree.

Application: I have lived with this Psalm on my mind lately, it seems to periodically crop up in places I go, people I listen to. Lately this has been the case. I listened to Donald Miller speak yesterday (Blue Like Jazz author) and he used it to share that the word gives up poetry and pictures that cause us to understand God more. He encouraged us to slow down, to not be in a hurry about our spiritual growth. If spiritual maturity is something we are to move towards, it will be more like a tree growing by a stream and less like a trip or a destination. This is why we are so fascinated with Time lapse video. We want to see progress, “speed up the camera!” This week, go and sit and watch a tree grow. You probably won’t see much. We are trapped in our own culture, wanting things faster and faster, and God patiently forms us over time, tests, moments, that on their own don’t seem to account for much but put them together…

Last week while listening to Wayne Cordeiro he told the story of giant trees in California. These trees were in a national park and they were beginning to fall over and no one knew why. What they found out was the root system that spread out around the tree was beginning to fail. People who walked through the park among the trees were trampling on the roots and kicking up the soil, destroying the roots. When just enough soil was loosened around the foundation of these monsters, a gust of wind would come and the tree would crash to the earth.
The tree’s strength lies in its root system. They now have roped off areas around the trees critical root systems. What about our root system? What is kicking up my soil? Are my roots being trampled on? The conclusion, My roots need to be roped off and protected…Period.

Even before this I was watching planet Earth, “forests”, and was struck by the immense, incredible majesty of the forests in the Northwest where trees grow hundreds of feet in the air and are thousands of years old. What strength. We value this strength so much, we protect it with passion. It is a national park. We protect these places with fervor and identify them with words we idealize and yet struggle with like, ancient, beauty, peace, sacred.

At the deepest place of my soul, this is what I desire…To be at a place where I can understand and mysteriously connect with my God. God started with me and I was a boy, he wants me to be a man. Some days I don’t feel much like a man. My maturity is slow and feels even stagnant at times. But “Planet Earth” got my attention. It spoke to me. It drew me back to him. It pointed me back to Jesus It is like the scripture from my youth was shouting at me, “Blessed is the man…He is like a tree planted by streams of water..” Psalm 1