Like an olive tree, flourishing

It’s writing day today.  Which means that once more, I packed my books and dreams in that burgundy backpack, grabbed my keys and phone, and headed south. 

We drove in silence together in the dark, Boy Number Two and I. Glancing over at the passenger’s seat, I smiled to myself.  If that wasn’t just like him – riding along with a crazy stocking cap atop his head that Grandma had just sent him yesterday as though it were the most normal thing in the world.  Where had we gotten this one, I wondered silently. FacebookTwitterGoogle+DiggPinterestBlogger

Coming to a respectable stop on Panther Drive (as opposed to slowing down to 35 as I’m occasionally tempted to do), I let him out with the requisite, “Pray for me, I’ll pray for you.  Love you, Mom.”  With a final wave, the kid with the monkey head slouched up to wait by the front entrance.

Coffee in hand, I settled into my favorite corner, lamp shining over my shoulder, and I opened the Word.  It was the Psalmist who spoke. 

“I am like an olive tree flourishing in the house of God.”

The words leapt from the page and landed squarely in my heart.  An olive tree!  Flourishing, just there in the house of God.  Yes.  Yes!

For a desert sojourner, it was water.  It was life.  It was affirming, encouraging beyond words.  An olive tree.  In the desert!

It’s been a long, hard year.  Actually, it’s been a long, hard number of years.  But the last 14 to 16 months had brought increasingly difficult and trying circumstances into our lives that we couldn’t have foreseen; things that we were helpless to change.  How I struggled.  Wrestled.  Railed.  Prayed.  Pled.  Sought. 

I went hunting for God.  And true to His Word, “Those who seek Me, find Me.” 

And now, still walking in the desert, but with a glimmer of light down the path, I know – I know! – what the shepherd boy was talking about when he said, “I am like an olive tree, flourishing in the house of God.”

In spite of the tests, in spite of the pain, in spite of the discomfort and the days of solitude, I can say with every fiber of my being thatI am an olive tree, and I am flourishing in the house of my God.

The next two sentences that follow this shout of victory are these:  “I trust in God’s unfailing love forever and ever.  I will praise You forever for what You have done.” 

It is God and God alone who can take a small, fragile sapling and nurture it into a tree, green and growing, full of life and fruit. 

“I will praise you forever for what You have done.”