Work Like a Tree, Not Like Chaff

Most of us will spend more waking hours at work this summer than anywhere else, and Psalm 1 speaks to those hours. The tree in verse 3 bears fruit in season. It does not strain to produce all year. It draws from the stream, grows slowly, and yields what it should when the time arrives.

That is a very different model of work from the one most of us have absorbed. Chaff is busy. It moves constantly, blown by every wind of email and urgency, and it goes nowhere. A tree looks still by comparison. But the tree is the one that is actually doing something.

The lesson for an ordinary week is this. Rootedness is more productive than restlessness. A worker whose identity is anchored in God can afford to say no, to rest on the seventh day, to do one thing carefully rather than six things anxiously. Colossians 3:23 tells us to work at whatever we do with all our heart, as working for the Lord. That is tree work, deep and unhurried.

So before you open the laptop, open the psalm. Let the stream feed the work. Then bear fruit in season, and do not despise the seasons when your job is simply to keep your leaf green.