Like a Tree

Psalm 1

He shall be like a tree,

Planted by rivers of water,

Bringing forth his fruit in his season.—Psalm 1:3 

In these quiet years I'm watching a tree grow, a birch tree I planted forty years ago. It was a sapling then. Now it stands in mature verdure, just outside our picture window, beautiful in every season of the year. 

So it is with our efforts to help others grow: We plant and water and fret over our “saplings," but God, the maker of trees, can make grow.

Occasionally I hear from those I’ve not seen for awhile, and discover to my delight that "my children are walking in truth"—with no help at all from me. It’s a gentle reminder that it takes God to make a tree (Ephesians 4:15).

German theologian Helmut Thielike wrote, “The man who doesn’t know how to let go, who is a stranger to quiet confident joy in him who carries out his purposes without us (or also through us 

or in spite of us)... that man will become but a miserable creature in his old age. Can the reason why many aging people are melancholy and fearful be that for decades they have never been able to ‘let go and let God’ and now are nothing but run-down merry-go-rounds (The Waiting Father).

And so, though I'm unable to care for my saplings these days—more's the pity—I can "let go" and watch them grow. I have no greater joy.

David Roper

9.28.19