Psalm 1 - Along the River
I’ve got a growing history with the Psalms and I am wondering if I am about to start on another journey with them.
A week or so ago, one of my colleagues who recently moved back to her home country of Australia, shared about a music project online that started in January of 2020. A couple, who make up the duo Poor Bishop Hooper, began to release a weekly original song based on a Psalm. So they started with Psalm 1 and are now up to Psalm 94 (as of right now - 95 is supposed to be released tomorrow). They are doing this for free (but they do have an option to donate to support their work) and all the songs are available at http://everypsalm.com . So I have been listening to Psalm 1 a lot the last week and have been drawn in by their lyrics repeated several times over towards the end of the song...
Like trees along the river with leaves that never wither...
The way that they sing it just enchants me and gets me going back to what drew me into the Psalms in the first place. When my friend Kolia told me to pray the Psalms back in January of 2014, in a really dark point in my life, it was verse 3 from Psalm 1 that really spoke to me.
They are like trees
planted by streams of water,
which yield their fruit in its season,
and their leaves do not wither.
In all that they do, they prosper.Psalm 1:3
More than anything else at that time, I wanted to be like those trees that were drawing up their life and energy and were not dry and brittle, which was how I felt at the time. That was my deep prayer at that time and is still my prayer today even though I don’t feel nearly like I did seven years ago. I want my roots to be down deep and drawing upon the source of all that I am. And I want to be helping others feel the same, to help their roots grow deep so that they are nurtured throughout all the seasons of life.
But here’s the other thing with this Psalm. In most cases, even trees planted right by the stream go through seasons of plenty and seasons of want, seasons of too much and seasons of just enough. And leaves do wither and fall just as they are starting to do right now. But new life and new growth will come again and those leaves will bud, grow, mature, fall, and the cycle will begin anew. But through all of those seasons, the tree will be fine if the roots are down deep into their Source of life.
That’s still my prayer and my song. How is your rootedness feeling?