Daily Devotional for Wednesday, September 18

God and the Redeemed

“The righteous shall flourish like the palm tree: he shall grow like a cedar in Lebanon. Those that be planted in the house of the Lord shall flourish in the courts of our God,” Psalm 92:12, 13.

My mother-in-law has a place next to her house where anything we plant always grows very well. Things just grow, flourish and bloom with ease. On the other hand, anything I plant in my yard is work. Things have to be watered, fertilized and otherwise tended to. All we have to do at my mother-in-law’s place is pull a few weeds now and then. At my place, you earn every flower by the sweat of your brow.

This thought brings the Garden of Eden to my mind. Adam and Eve only had to enjoy the bounty of it, and it flourished. Once God ejected them from the Garden, everything became hard work, trouble and toil. What was the difference? God was with them in the Garden of Eden; outside, they were somewhat on their own. We grow best close to God. Jesus taught some lessons about the nature of Him as a vine and us as branches (John 15).

In this psalm, the writer is thanking God for many things in dealing with His children. He uses the comparison of the robust palm and cedar trees to illustrate how God makes us flourish. He uses the illustration of being planted in the courts of the Lord to teach us how we thrive by staying near the Lord. Yet, later in the psalm, we see the wicked compared to grass, which is temporary and disappears quickly.

Which one are you? Are you a robust palm or cedar tree, growing and producing fruit by staying near God? Or are you a blade of grass, fading away quickly and getting trampled?

JUST A THOUGHT
Stay close to God, and you will grow and flourish; get too far away, and you will wither away.

Wally Fry