The River of Life

Having grown up with memory verses in Sunday School, as well as in my Bible classes at school-school (shout out to NTCS!), meant that there are certain phrases that have made themselves at home in my memory banks…

Every now and then they pop into the forefront of my mind and it happened again the other day! I was in the backyard enjoying some fresh air and realized that the flowers I’d been caring for way back in August were still blooming!

Maybe the weather was especially cool that day or the skies a little darker than usual… for some reason the fuchsia flowers especially popped. In the background, the evidence of autumn dropping leaves off trees was beginning to collect. Branches were becoming more sparse and yet these bright little flowers continued to blossom.

And I thought, “Huh, flowers in every season… healing for the nations…”

Now, the remembering-the-references part of memory verses has never been my strong suit, so when I tried to look this one up there were a bunch of different verses!

Psalm 1 talks about the one who is blessed because their delight is in the Law of the Lord, because they meditate on it day and night… “That person is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither – whatever they do prospers.” (Psalm 1:3)

In Jeremiah, God is comparing two types of people again: one who is cursed and one who is blessed. “But blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in him. They will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when the heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit.” (Jeremiah 17:7-8)

There is already LOTS of encouragement we can pull from these two passages… We can be people who are like trees which yield fruit in every season by remaining steadfast in living according to God’s Law and by trusting in the Lord and putting our confidence in God!

My brain did seem to default to Revelation for some reason though and, lo and behold, another tree!

“Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be any curse.” (Revelation 22:1-3)

Each of these trees not only bears fruit in every season, representing blessed-ness, they are also all planted by streams and rivers of water. In this Revelation passage, the trees of life are planted by the river of the water of life.

Unfortunately, these beautiful hanging plants in my backyard are not planted by streams of water, nor will they be able to withstand the early morning frosts around the corner. These too will wither up and join the leaves that have already fallen to the ground.

However, as the people of God, we get to be like these trees! These trees that never die…
N. T. Wright writes about how we are called to be “signposts of the kingdom” and in this passage we see a glimpse of that Kingdom in its final glory. We catch a glimpse of a river, bright as crystal! Of the tree of life which offers healing to the nations, direct redemption for the curse it has been linked to since the Fall.

We get to be people who reflect these things.
We get to be like trees planted by streams of living water… this is how we will not fear. This is how we will have no worries in a year of drought. This is how we will extend healing to the nations!

By remaining by this river. By allowing our roots to go deeper still into the rich, nutrient ground by this river. By meditating on God’s Law and by putting our trust in him…