Palms

Finishing my call, I look up at the top-heavy mop heads of the cluster of palms above me.

It my first opportunity to step outside of the Arizona hotel where I am working.  The air is balmy, the birds clamorous.  The palms are about as indigenous to the landscape as I am, but it doesn’t matter.  I enjoy their ridiculously long, unbroken trunks.  The clump of branches has a fringe of fronds, rippling in the breeze like strands of hair.

Psalm 92 likens God’s people to a palm: 

“The righteous flourish like the palm tree… they flourish in the courts of our God.  They still bear fruit in old age; they are ever full of sap and green.”  (vs. 12-14) 

The trees above me seem youthful.  Maybe it’s the hair.  Maybe it’s the fact that they are thriving in a parking lot.  But I can see a strength, and endurance in them.  Maybe even a flourishing.

 

Stepping in close to them, I’m able to capture the trunks coming in from different edges of the frame.  I like this, because it accentuates the sense of community in the stand.  It reminds me that we are called to belong to God’s family – not to exist individually.  Sometimes, on trips like the ones I’ve been on lately, it’s hard to remember that.

I slip out the next day in the heat of the afternoon and take another photo.  This time, the sun is in the midst of the branches, like a radiant jewel set in the hair. 

 

Wherever two or three gather in my name, leaning their tousled heads together, there I am among them.

Lord, you are the sap that runs from my roots to my branches.  I flourish because of you.  That abundant life you give comes from being close to you, and is strengthened by being close to other believers.  Help me to continue to connect to you and your people, that I may bear fruit my whole life.