Daily Manna · Day 105 · April 15
Like a Tree
“Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful. But his delight is in the law of the LORD; and in his law doth he meditate day and night. And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.”
"Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful."
Father, before anything else in this psalm, we notice the order: walking, then standing, then sitting. Nobody decides to become scornful all at once. First we listen to a voice we half agree with. Then we stop arguing back. Then one morning we find we have sat down among the scornful, and the seat has become ours. The psalm describes the slide as a slowing down, and that is exactly how it has felt to us.
And You do not stop at what the blessed man refuses. The psalm describes him twice, once by what he will not do and once by what he loves: "his delight is in the law of the LORD; and in his law doth he meditate day and night." It says delight, which is more than duty. The Hebrew word for "meditate" is also used of a lion growling over its prey and of a dove cooing. It is a low sound that keeps going, like someone slowly chewing something over. We have not been doing that. We have been reading Your word the same quick way we read everything else.
You know what we scroll through before we sleep. You know which voices in it leave us scornful of people we have never met. Take those voices away from us, or give us the honesty to put them down ourselves.
And here is the promise we hold You to, on the terms You set. You have not said we will prosper whenever we want. You said, "he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither." The fruit comes "in his season," at the right time, which may not be now and will not be on a schedule we choose. A tree planted by water does not panic in a dry August. Its roots went down to the water long before anyone was watching, and its leaf stays green when everything around it turns brown. Plant us like that, Lord, beside Your water. Amen.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 105 is A City of Truth (Zechariah 8:16).