Life Is a Desert

He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither.  (Psalm 1:3)

​Life can be described as moving from one challenge to another.  It has often been said that just when you think you are getting ahead of the rat race…the rats get bigger.  The result is that life often seems like a vicious cycle of ups and downs, eb and flow, mountain tops and valleys.  We read about having joy and contentment in the Christian life, but somehow these things always seem illusive to us, always just beyond our reach.  This is where Psalm 1 can be so incredibly helpful.  There the psalmist writes, “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.”  In other words, blessed, happy, joyful, content, is the man who does not live like the rest of the world, who does not try and keep up with the Jones’, but instead immerses himself in God’s word “day and night.”  When he does this, the end result will be that he will be “like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither.”  That is, even when the driest of life’s droughts come our way, when life seems to be leading us through the Sahara Desert, in the midst of life’s dry and cracked barren land, those who meditate on God’s word both day and night will be “like a tree planted by streams of water.”  Lush, green, and healthy.  We will stand tall and firm, with our roots sunk deep into the promises of God from which we cannot be moved.