Psalm 1: A Tree, Not a Machine

The Psalms open with two pictures: a tree planted by streams of water, and chaff that the wind drives away.

A tree is slow. Nobody watches it grow. What it does is stay near water, and the fruit arrives in its season rather than on demand.

If you have been measuring your spiritual life by visible output this week, the first Psalm offers a different metric: proximity, sustained over time.