Flourishing Like Palm Trees

A phone on a table that does not ring before noon. A man who used to be called about problems worth his judgment, making a second coffee at nine because there is nothing else in the morning.

This psalm carries a heading that tells you where it belongs: A Psalm or Song for the sabbath day. It is the only one in the book with that title, sung by Israel on the day when nobody produced anything, and that is worth holding onto, because a song for the day when no work is done is a strange place to find a promise about fruitfulness. Whatever these trees are doing, they are not doing it by output.

The imagery is specific rather than decorative. A palm in that country grows where there is water, looks unimpressive for years, and carries its heaviest crops late; a date palm can bear well past the age at which the person who planted it has died. A cedar of Lebanon puts down what it needs and outlasts empires. Then the clause carrying the condition, which most readings skip: those that be planted in the house of the LORD shall flourish in the courts of our God. Planted, not visiting. And what follows is deliberately unglamorous about age: they shall still bring forth fruit in old age; they shall be fat and flourishing.

So the question is not what you intend to do with your retirement. It is this. Where are you planted, and could anybody tell by looking? Not what you attend. What you are rooted in, in a season when nobody has assigned you a role and there is no output to point at.

Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 231 is Prepared His Heart (Ezra 7:10).

All 365 readings in Daily Manna