i am a green olive tree

[7 minutes]

But I am like a green olive tree in the house of God. I trust in the steadfast love of God forever and ever.

Psalm 52:8

David wrote this only one chapter removed from his confession to God when a broken, sinful man. The chapters aren’t chronological, of course, but their arrangement seems to be — for me at least — by design.

Looking back over the arc of our lives, we can dredge up seasons when we wondered if we’d ever get past our failures. In other seasons, we’ve known the inestimable joy of intimacy with God we never wanted to end. Hello sanctification.

In Psalm 51 David is the guilty man. In Psalm 52 he is gutted by the crimes of another man — Doeg the Edomite. Doeg brazenly murdered 85 innocent people in cold blood. The slaughtered were priests, together with their wives and children. Their crime? They gave David sanctuary when he was on the run from King Saul. David was beside himself with fury.

“How dare you, Doeg! You will face the wrath of a just God, you dog! You think you’re a big man, all high and mighty, plotting my demise. But it is you who will go down. Me? I’m a green olive tree in God’s house, big boy. You, on the other hand, are kindling for the lake of fire.”

No doubt David was reeling from the news of the priests of Nob and their families. It wasn’t enough for the vile Edomite to kill the priests, he massacred their families too. They died because they all stood with David!

Talk about survivor’s guilt.

selah

In the middle of this painful psalm is a Selah. It’s a strange place for a Selah, sure, but David tacks one on.

You love evil more than good, and lying more than speaking about what is right. Selah

(v3)

Selah.

Catch your breath.

Gather your wits.

Get quiet.

Be still.

John Andrew Bryant has battled mental illness his entire life. His brain never turns off; it is always noisy in there. His affliction is a daily surrender and his dependence upon God for the healing of his mind is evident in his words. John describes finding a “foothold” in those especially stormy times when his brain is firing in all directions.

“What I have in Christ is the simple, painful renunciation of the urges created by my brain, the ability to say no to desires and compulsions that will not just go away. I wish it was more. But that is all it’s been: a foothold in the storm of thought and feelings…that foothold, that boat, that kernel, is not a place where I do something to be okay. It is a place where I don’t. That patient, quiet understanding is the place where I stand with Christ and don’t do anything to make things right or win or be okay. It is the place where I don’t fix, the place where I don’t defend myself, the place where I don’t figure things out, and the place where I don’t know for sure. The place where it is somehow possible to not engage those compulsions. The place I stand with Christ and endure what it feels like to not do those things. The place where I’ve learned to stand with Christ by being quiet.”
A Quiet Mind To Suffer With, p17-18

That is David’s Selah here in the 52nd Psalm. He reminds himself with that Selah that however much evil swirls about him, he is not its victim. He must not surrender to it. Lady Macbeth told her husband to “screw his courage to the sticking place,” and this appears to be what David – albeit righteously – was telling himself to do.

I am tempted to substitute the name Jesus where I see a Selah in scripture. I don’t think it breaks any rules, personally.

My heart is broken. Jesus.

I’m hanging on by a thread. Jesus.

Lord, I don’t understand. Jesus.

My only hope is you. Jesus.

This too shall pass. Jesus.

Once upon a time, twelve men sat for an important gospel meal. The scene was humming with observable tension as it was the last Passover in which Jesus would take part. While he was speaking, John, we are told, leaned against his Messiah’s breast. Although the atmosphere was charged, the beloved disciple anchored himself to the Rock.

Think of Selah, then, as pressing into Jesus. Selah, where you don’t fix or defend or try to figure out. You listen. You wait. You trust. You are still.

Like a tree.

a green olive tree

David imagines himself in verse 8 as a tree, but not just any tree. He is God’s tree, a temple tree. He was a well-manicured olive tree, not some scrub tree out in the wild. His roots were resolutely screwed into the sticking place of holy soil.

David, consummate lover of nature, appreciated the beautiful trees in Jerusalem. Adorning the temple grounds, no doubt, were flowering olive trees whose aroma misted the air. He knew they provided the oil for worship in the holy place and said “I’m one of those trees.”

Before I’m anything, I’m a worshipper of God. The Lord made me to love him and enjoy him forever. Doegs and Sauls and Goliaths come and go, but I’m rooted in the faithfulness of God.

The thing about olive trees: they are capable of surviving the worst that life can dish out. There’s an olive tree in Crete that is close to 3,000 years old. Believe me, it’s seen some stuff. Paul was shipwrecked by a horrible storm that drove him into the sands of Crete in Acts 27. That tree is still producing olives today.

I’m one of those trees. I’m precious to God. He is invested in protecting me, so I will not be defeated by those who wish ill upon me. The times I’m living in will not get the best of me. I’m living in the Land of Selah.

Let that cruel dog Doeg and his ilk be who they are, they won’t affect me. They can choose evil but I will stay planted here in the garden of the Lord.

What are you going through right now, beloved? What’s got your goat? Who’s oppressing you? That hard thing in your life may be a person, it may be a condition, it may be a situation. Your hardship hurts even more because it’s out of your control and it’s not letting up. I get it.

Step back like David did and see the bigger picture. See a Land called Selah. Can you see it? Now look closer and see a City in that Land called Peace. Picture yourself there, planted in its soil, loved and cherished and protected by God. You may not think so, but you are thriving. It may feel like you’re losing, but God sees olives in you.

Let them cancel you. Let the situation play out. Ignore the lying voices inside your head. Screw your courage to the sticking place and hang your hope on the sure peg of Selah. Hollywood is going to be what it is. Politicians will be who they are. The world and its pleasures are passing away; let them go the way of the dust. Stand your ground, Olive Tree. It’s okay. He’s got this. He’s got you. You’re safe. Just be still, stay rooted, and “trust in his unfailing love” (v8).

Selah, beloved. Jesus.

who told you?

“Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?”

Genesis 3:11

[7 minutes]

There is a crisis of information today. No, not the lack of it, because, as we all well know, there are no limits to where we can find whatever we’re looking for whenever we need it. Alexa, how long does it take to boil an egg in the microwave? Hey Siri, what was the primary reason for the downfall of the Roman Empire?

Our appetite for knowledge is appeased through Google, ChatGPT, X, Apple News, Wikipedia, YouTube, Waze, Food Network, Zillow, and a thousand other sources as close to us as our devices. We are glutted with real-time data from every direction.

Suffering from the tyranny of FOMO, we bathe ourselves in digital light, robotically taking in whatever it feeds us — good or bad — for hours on end. Like junkies, our habit is fixed by mainlining content that is killing our souls. The Matrix is changing us from being made in God’s image to beings who slither around on our bellies like snakes.

In the beginning, God was the only source of information. So when the Lord asked Adam, “Who told you?” the latter had to sheepishly admit to going off-script and getting hoodwinked by misinformation.

It all falls apart in Genesis 3. The First Man on planet earth had barely gotten his feet under him before he believed the lie and, tragically, became the lie itself.

who told you God can’t be trusted?

The sin underneath all our sins is to trust the lie of the serpent that we cannot trust the love and grace of Christ.
—Martin Luther

Thanks to the Original Couple, we have embedded inside us the default mechanism to accuse God of being spartanly unfair or cruel. It’s a constant battle for many to quell the urge to instinctively blame God for their misfortunes.

I find it telling that the first book in our Bibles — chronologically, that is — is not Genesis, but Job. Of course Adam and Eve walked the earth long before he did, but Job preceded the writer of Genesis by a long shot. If we can trust the dating of Job, and I believe we can, then it asks the oldest question of all: If God is so good then why do I hurt so badly?

Now you can see why Moses opened the canon with Genesis and the rest of the Pentateuch. Each of those first five books provides a master class for people who have a background of suffering and struggling to “not go there” when they are tempted to believe the lie that God cannot be trusted:

This is God. This is who he is. This is how he is to be worshiped. This is how he is to be trusted. Yes, bad things happen. We know this all too well! But God is not the villain in our story; he is fighting for us and faithfully planning our blessed future.”

Job fought that same urge and won. Moses had to do battle against the devil’s lie in Midian no doubt, but he overcame and led the people of Israel to leave Egypt and overcome in the wilderness. Those who didn’t make it were those who never got the taste of Egypt’s fruit out of their mouths.

One of my daily follows on X (Twitter) posted this recently and I thought it captured quite well the common struggle of mankind:

What good is the apple when one bite makes your life a living hell?

who told you God made you inferior?

In the first page of Holy writ we are told that humans are made in God’s image, in His likeness. By page two, Adam and Eve are no longer satisfied with that and looking for an upgrade.

The present culture has bullied impressionable minds to think they are not enough. Social media influencers, cultural icons, and even medical professionals have convinced an entire generation they are born wrong, look wrong, or believe wrong.

None of it is new. The satan has been using the same tactics to mar the imago dei in us since the beginning. He laughs at our gullibility. He loves to see us stripped of glory and dressed in fig leaves.

Babies are blobs of cells.

Children are an inconvenience.

Old people are a nuisance.

All men are misogynists.

Women are sex objects.

Gender is fluid.

Fathers aren’t necessary.

Families are a capitalistic construct.

We love our labels. Many of our labels serve no other purpose but to depersonalize others and erase the imago dei from their beingness. And the devil laughs.

who told you God was finished with you?

Did you think your shame defined you?

Did you think it was over for you?

Did you think you were beyond saving?

Adam and Eve were painfully aware they were now defective. The shine wore off. The original pair were like those brand new cars you drive off the lot that depreciate immediately.

This is why humans “cover” themselves with things that hide their weaknesses.

We become defensive.

We have learned how to hide our wounds to avoid the proper remedy.

We become deceptive.

We have learned to lie and, by so doing, have become the lie itself.

We become destructive.

We will burn down the whole house before admitting we are wrong and coming home.

From that point, once the die is cast, Adam and Eve no longer see the supernatural. They can’t see God, they can only hear him coming. Their souls weren’t the only thing that went dark; their eyes went dark too.

But, as it is written,
“What no eye has seen, nor ear heard,
nor the heart of man imagined,
what God has prepared for those who love him”—
these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God.
1 Corinthians 2:9-10

But God, in grace, made sure they knew his approach. We are told the very first words after the Fall were spoken by God:

“Where are you?”

He came seeking us. There’s grace in those words! Where are you? They imply they were somewhere they should not be but they still mattered enough for God to come looking for them. It’s the same for every human since.

You’ve messed up but you’re not irredeemable.

Your situation is not the end of the story.

We can’t hide too long without having to come out and face the music. It will catch up with us. We will eventually be outed. Better to come forward than die in the dark.

In Christ, we are not pursued like wanted criminals, but like wanted children, or like wanted lovers, because wrath is replaced by desire.
— Rachel Gilson

Don’t allow the voices and narratives of culture shape who you are. It’s fake news. Some of it has just enough truth to make it sound authentic, but it’s still a lie.

Beloved, God is not done with you. Wherever you’re hiding, whatever you’re trying to cover yourself up with to impersonate the imago dei, just stop. You may not see him, but he sees you.

I’m willing to bet you’re hearing his approach in these words. Why are you here? Who told you these lies? Come out, come back, come home. He’s calling you back to truer things than you’ll ever hear out there.

Selah, beloved.

the rock that is higher than i

*The Dolomites*, Photography by Sergio Anotoni

From the end of the earth will I cry unto thee, when my heart is overwhelmed:
lead me to the rock that is higher than I.
Psalm 61:2, KJV

[5 minutes]

This time 43 years ago I was meditating on these very words. For days on end I agonized over how they’d become my lived experience.

My “end of the earth” was a college campus in Chattanooga, Tennessee and I was an “overwhelmed” college kid. My desperation owed to the fact I couldn’t find any reason to go on if something didn’t change. My miserable world ran late for an appointment with a giant fork in the road. Meanwhile, there I was, stuck in a mud hole on the side of the road.

Quite suddenly, from nowhere, this verse hit my ear drums like a percussive bomb. Everything shook and shifted. I memorized it. I quoted it. I gnawed on it. I wept over it. I fell asleep with it muttering on my lips. I visited it in my dreams.

It now strikes me as odd that in all of the decades of preaching, I’ve used that scripture as the main text of a sermon perhaps once or twice. And yet, it remains the sun in my existential solar system.

The climb

If you pray that God will move your mountain and he doesn’t, assume Christ wants you to climb it instead and see him transfigured.
— Beth Moore

Sometimes we see a mountain and pray that it gets moved. Other times we see one and say — in the spirit of 85-year old Caleb — “Take me there, Lord.” My weary heart was done with ‘making mud-pies in a slum.’* I was now after the Rock that was higher than i.

Since then, I’ve been tempted by lesser things, settled for them, repented of them, and raised my eyes again and again to that blessed Mount. I’m still climbing, thanks be to God.

Almost twenty years ago (I remember it well because it was my last hospitalization for pressure sores), a family friend told me she couldn’t shake an image of me from her mind. In that hard season I was as depressed in spirit as a body could be, fighting yet another pressure wound and facing more weeks and months of hospitalization. When the woman asked if she might share an encouraging word, I was only too happy to listen.

I see you as a mountain goat winding around a tall mountain on steady feet. I’m struck by how the feet stay planted even though the path is treacherous. And every time you go around the mountain, you go higher. The way is never easy, but as you keep moving, you keep climbing, climbing, ever higher.

Think what you will about visions and mental pictures, but I must say I found it gripping. She hadn’t known about Psalm 61 and its impact on my life, so the image had me transfixed, even more so because of its peculiar timing. My situation was redolent of a frightened Gideon hiding out in the wine-press, told by the Angel he was a mighty man of valor. A sure-footed mountain goat conquering the craggy cliffs? Me? Hospital-bed me?

Moving stones

The timing of God, beloved, is impeccable. Of course it seemed a bit too “peccable” for Mary and Martha when Jesus finally showed up for their departed brother’s funeral. Our Lord was only fashionably late, turns out. It seems the will of the Almighty was to let things play out. By doing so, our Lord showed them his heart (“Jesus wept”) and his awesome power.

Lazarus’s resurrection suddenly planted the idea in their heads that there was no obstacle greater than God’s power! Sickness? Come on, small potatoes. Quieting a storm? Childs play. Walking on water? He could do that in his sleep! But death? Even worse, a fourth-day-body-is-ripe-by-now death? Now we’re talking.

Let the reader understand: there’s nothing quite like a good old-fashioned resurrection to keep you climbing just to see what else God has in store. I needed a resurrection while I languished — overwhelmed — on that bed of misery…and God gave me one. He set my feet on a Rock, praise his Name. I’ve been the beneficiary of a thousand and one mercies and so have you. You’ve seen God do things that took your breath away, things that put you flat on your face in worship. So have I.

My sister told me once upon a time she wanted to see me reach heights that few have ever reached. There are countless others who have gone a fair sight higher than I can imagine for myself. By the grace of God, and with his help to give me sure feet, I’m going to keep climbing. I’m tired of pebbles and stones. I want the Rock that is higher than i.

Selah, beloved. Onward and upward!

_________________________________________

*Full quote by C. S. Lewis, “We do not want too much, but too little. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.” (The Weight of Glory)