Talking Trees

6 min read

8 But I am like an olive tree flourishing in the house of God; I trust in God’s unfailing love for ever and ever.

9 For what you have done I will always praise you in the presence of your faithful people. And I will hope in your name, for your name is good.

— Psalm 52:8-9

If a flourishing olive tree could speak, what more could it say?

I am not what anyone would consider wealthy, materially speaking. And yet I am flourishing. I have so much beyond my means—and only because God has planted me in His house. Of course, it’s just plain foolish not to recognize that many people have supported us, helped us, and blessed us. But it is God who made it happen. It is God who planted me in His house and tended to me so that I might flourish and bear abundant fruit that I might share in His blessings and bless others.

The fruit is praise—and not simply praise but eternal praise. Because the praise of God is never really praise if it ever ends, which is why death never glorifies God.

And not just eternal praise but eternal praise together with the community of saints. Because the praise of God is never fully praise if it is practiced alone. Not that praising God when I’m alone is pointless. The knowledge and experience of God’s presence even when praising Him alone is personally encouraging and empowering. That alone tells me that God is pleased.

But more than my own personal blessing in Him (which surely blesses God), God is blessed even more when I bless the community with my praise. Not because my praise is “good,” but because the saints lift up one another when we join together with the choir of angels in heaven and lift up high praise to God.

I can never encourage another saint with my absence. And if my presence or absence makes no difference to another saint, how sad for me. How sad for us.

The fruit is trust. And again, can trust every be TRUST if it ends in death? The trust that God has born in me is trust in His UNFAILING LOVE (chesed, חֶסֶד). God is chesed. There is no situation or circumstance or state of mind or state of being in which the love of God will ever fail me. This is the trust that God is cultivating in me, and such trust must be eternal.

The fruit is hope. There is hope, and then there is HOPE in the name of the LORD—LORD Almighty, LORD Eternal, LORD of heaven and earth, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

We so easily put our hope in education, wealth, career, vacations, and zip codes, and yet so easily turn our backs on true HOPE. Not that education, wealth, career, zip codes, and vacations are bad. But do any of these things have a personality such that they can promise us anything GOOD?

The name of the LORD is GOOD, and our LORD always works for the GOOD of those who LOVE Him, who have been called according to His PURPOSE for our lives—that is, to bear good and abundant FRUIT in response to His tender touch.

Father, Thank You for planting me in Your house. Do not let my fruit wither and fade away and die. Never let me be a fruitless tree, but let me flourish with Your FRUIT. In Jesus’s name. Amen.