planted or blown

Opening Prayer: O Lord, may I be like a tree planted by the stream, rather than like chaff that is blown by the wind.  May I meditate on you and your law in a way that gives my life the rootedness and the durability you want me to have, even in the midst of the storms.  Amen.

Scripture: Psalm 1:1-6

Journal:  Which one best describes your life right now: planted by the stream or blown about by the winds?  How might prayer and meditation affect that?  How has God’s word spoken into your life lately?

Reflection: Two things are prominent in Psalm 1: an action and an image.  Torah-meditation is the action; a transplanted tree is the image.

     Torah (law) is God’s words that hit the target of the human condition.  The noun torah comes from the verb, yarah, that means to throw something, a javelin, say, so that it hits its mark.  The word that hits its mark is torah.  In living speech, words are javelins hurled from one mind into another.  The javelin word goes out of one person and pierces another.  Not all words are javelins; some are only tin cans, carrying information from one place to another.  But God’s word has this aimed, intentional, personal nature.  When we are spoken to this way, piercingly and penetratingly, we are not the same.  These words get inside us and work their meaning in us.

     As we prepare to pray, to answer the words God addresses to us, we learn that all of God’s words have this characteristic: they are torah and we are target. (Answering God by Eugene Peterson)

Prayer

Closing Prayer: O God, may your word pierce the target of my heart this day.  May it start a work in me that gives my life both rootedness and fruitfulness.  Amen.