Resting by the River
Resting by the River
Psalm 1:3
He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither.
Four and a half years ago, when COVID first hit and all of North Carolina went on lockdown, I went out to Walmart, bought a $15 river birch tree, and brought it back home to our back yard that at the time was little more than a slab of dirt and weeds. I dug a hole right outside our dining room window, untangled some of the roots from the root ball, and planted the sapling solidly into the soil. The truth is I didn’t know anything about river birches when I’d seen the tree standing on the curb of Walmart’s garden center, apart from a few instructions written on the tag related to how often to water it and how much sunlight it needed; but I knew our yard needed a makeover, and I needed something to do with my hands during COVID, and it was only fifteen dollars, so that was that.
A few months later, I took my son Micah on a long hike down the mountainous Campbell Creek trail thirty minutes from home, and that’s when we both made a jaw-dropping discovery—the sort you can’t get from Google or ChatGPT. We understood where the name ‘river birch’ came from. The birches towering before us, with their roots nestled deep beneath the currents of the creek, were colossal in size. Some seemed as wide and thick as oaks, and some reached higher than the surrounding pines, putting into perspective just how deficient our little birch back home was with its meager diet of hose water and occasional rain showers. In pondering that juxtaposing picture, Psalm 1:3 rushed into my mind and I was struck by the thought that the difference between my soul when I’m rooted in Christ’s words and when I’m not, between my inner joy when I’m drinking daily from God’s promises and when I’m neglectful of them, between my spiritual impact when abiding in Christ’s power and when I’m off trying do the Christian life on my own, is like the difference between these towering birches of Campbell Creek and the anemic little sapling in my back yard.
Friend, I asked my son this and I’ll ask you as well: which version will you be today?