Staying Fresh and Flourishing

I love this photo for so many reasons.

Maybe you wouldn't know it, but Dave has such a tender heart for our little furry girl, and enjoys her a lot. And she is quite enamored with him too!

But there's another reason why I love this photo so much. It's the same reason that I like the next one too. See anything similar between them (besides the dog?!)

 It's this tree, on the far right, that intrigues me, and gives me cause for thought.

 How does a tree grow out of the rock??

I'm not a botanist or an arborist, who could tell you the whys and wherefores of its existence there.

But this morning I kept thinking about it from a spiritual standpoint as I was reading in Psalms.

If my life is like that tree in the rock - meaning that at times there are hard, difficult, seemingly impassable situations that could potentially keep me from thriving - how do I stay fresh, green with life, flourish on the rock and even produce fruit, though it looks as though I'm in a very hard spot?

Psalm 92 held the answer to those questions for me this morning. These are His instructions to me on how to stay fresh, thrive and produce fruit:

• Praise the Lord
• Make music to His name
• Proclaim His love in the morning
• Proclaim His faithfulness at night
• Be glad by His deeds
• Acknowledge His great works and the profoundness of His thoughts
• Exalt the Lord
• Live righteously
• Plant myself in the house of the Lord
• Proclaim Him as upright and as my Rock

If I purposely sought to do those things every day, I think I'd look like that tree! Healthy, strong, vibrant, adding beauty to the rest of the scene in that cove. My roots would be deep (I'm pretty sure that has something to do with why that tree thrives in the rock), and no amount of wind would cause me to fall.

As I continue to be in the Word and spend time with the Lord these days, these are the kinds of things He's speaking about to me.

So good, so nourishing.