Torah and Tree

Cindy Mercer Photography

Ready? It's that time again: sound bites and spin. Another presidential election season is upon us. Blah, blah, and more blah. Much of this is as meaningless as chaff--weightless, empty. It behooves us to remember that the book of Psalms, the prayer book of the Bible, begins with pre-prayer. God, through the Psalmist, tells us to sit down, be quiet, and listen. Stop walking, standing, and sitting with sinners. Before we start teaching and training, debating and defending, we are to stop and listen. Listen to the law. Meditate on the Torah. Be rooted in the law of Lord; bear the fruit that evidences eternal life. As Spurgeon said, “The Lord’s trees are all evergreens.”

ROAD LESS TRAVELED

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth

Then took the other as just as fair
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet, knowing how way leads onto way
I doubted if I should ever come back

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence
Two roads diverged in a wood
And I took the one less traveled by
And that has made all the difference

Robert Frost


Psalm 1 (ESV)

Blessed is the man
who walks not in the counsel of the wicked,
nor stands in the way of sinners,
nor sits in the seat of scoffers;
but his delight is in the law of the Lord,
and on his law he meditates day and night.

He is like a tree
planted by streams of water
that yields its fruit in its season,
and its leaf does not wither.
In all that he does, he prospers.
The wicked are not so,
but are like chaff that the wind drives away.

Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment,
nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous;
for the Lord knows the way of the righteous,
but the way of the wicked will perish.