I can’t put my finger on when my obsession started. I’ve never had much of a green thumb and never felt particularly drawn to foliage. But at that moment, standing in IKEA, I knew I needed to own a palm tree.
Now, since it was Christmastime in the frigid winter of Chicago, you would never think a palm tree would have much chance of survival after it left my shopping cart. And you would be right. I killed my first palm tree mercilessly. Not on purpose, but still – that baby tree turned brown before Valentine’s Day.
A year after the death of my first baby tree, Tamara (meaning palm tree in Hebrew), I was determined to redeem myself. So I purchased a baby dragon tree, fittingly named Dragon. Dragon lived a wonderful, but still short life, before passing away quietly as his leaves began to droop and eventually lost all color.
In the beginning, I was an ill-equipped plant momma with very little experience caring for anything green. Thus, most things I cared for were no longer green. However, determined to own at least one living baby palm tree, I returned to IKEA to purchase one more palm tree. I selected her with care and lovingly transplanted her to a bigger pot. Her name is Arbolita, “little tree” in Spanish.
Either by my own trial and error or by the grace of God, Arbolita is still with us six years later, and she has grown so much. Arbolita moved back and forth with me between college dorm rooms, childhood bedrooms on Christmas break, the camp where I had my first job out of college, my first apartment, and every big move since.
How God Speaks Through Trees
While I can’t pinpoint exactly when my love of palm trees began, it has slowly become a language with which the Lord speaks to my heart. I have always felt nearest to God when I’ve been out in nature. But during the season of my life when I lived in the very gray city of Chicago, little greenhouses and large conservatories became my havens. Sitting amongst tropical fauna and palm trees in the warm greenhouse bubble felt a little like walking with Jesus through the Garden of Eden, even though I knew I’d have to return to the blustering winter winds and city slush on my return home.
When I moved back to suburban life outside St Louis, I grieved the loss of my conservatories. That was until I found the Jewel Box – an art-deco style greenhouse in the heart of St Louis filled with tropical plants. As soon as I entered its doors, I felt like I was home. And after a season of life where I had been transplanted and required to put roots down in unfamiliar soil, my little Garden of Eden felt like a gift.
After my own personal season of transition, and a national feeling of political instability, emotional angst, and anxiety over Covid – it had been two years of not knowing what the heck was happening.
So in my little garden with God, I asked: what is happening? He responded with Psalm 92, which has since become a favorite of mine. After the psalmist praises God, and then laments over the actions of the wicked, he writes:
“The righteous will flourish like a palm tree,
they will grow like a cedar of Lebanon;
planted in the house of the Lord,
they will flourish in the courts of our God.
They will still bear fruit in old age,
they will stay fresh and green,
proclaiming, “The Lord is upright;
he is my Rock, and there is no wickedness in him.”
Initially, I felt so seen by the Lord. Though my love of palm trees may feel quirky and cute to those around me, He gently reminded me that he knows me deeply and delights in the little things He created me to love.
But as I studied this passage (and continue to study it) it has become deeply significant.
What does it mean to flourish like a palm tree?
Considering my history of killing palm trees, I knew I didn’t have the answers for this one on my own, so I took it to Google. What I found is that Palm trees are known to survive hurricanes, when other trees would snap in half. This is because, while other tree trunk structures are hard and brittle against strong winds, palm trees can bend significantly without sustaining any significant damage. So while other trees are left in pieces after severe weather, palm trees are often still standing.
Palm trees are also known to grow in conditions where other plants might not. You can find different varieties of palm trees in deserts, rainforests, and everything in between. They can survive sweltering heat, dry sandy terrain, a wet swampy environment, and places with frequent storms. Though my tendency to kill my palm plants may suggest otherwise, they are resilient.
It’s significant to me that the true needs of a palm, like many other plants are sunlight and water. I could get cheesy and say that the key to growing in your faith is to receive the light from the Son and drink in His living water. And while that’s true, I think the significance of these verses goes far deeper than that general statement.
These verses don’t talk about any generic trees. They talk about Palm Trees and Cedars.
What is the Significance of Palm Trees in the Bible?
When God uses examples or gives us metaphors, He does so with great specificity. It’s special that He uses Palm Trees and Cedars here because those are two tree species that grow in the Middle East where much of the Bible takes place. Therefore, He is showing his people that he knows them and sees them by using examples they are familiar with. This very sentiment made me feel deeply loved by the Father when he used this Psalm with me. He didn’t give me a generic verse like John 3:16 to answer my heart’s plea. He answered with a specific verse that I would appreciate in a special way.
And though it is only recently that he’s begun to speak to me through Palm Trees, they are surprisingly common in the Bible. One website shared that palm trees are mentioned over 40 times in the Bible!
So while a funny little verse about a specific tree may seem like a strange passage to study deeply, this common recurrence shows that God has something to teach us through palm trees.
What does God teach us through Palm Trees?
Just like Jesus uses the fig tree as a common teaching tool with His disciples, God includes palm trees throughout the Scriptures. In 1 Kings 6 we learn that after years of waiting for God’s Temple to be built, King Solomon begins crafting the inner and outer sanctuaries (much of cedarwood), and the walls are engraved with images of palm trees.
Throughout the Bible, Palm trees and leaves symbolize growth, uprightness, beauty, fruitfulness, victory, and triumph. The crowd welcoming Jesus at the Triumphal Entry uses palm leaves for this reason. They were often waved like flags at parades or processions almost like we would wave an American Flag. They were also waved during a national victory or to welcome an important political figure or king with symbols of victory and triumph.
However, in Psalm 92, amidst these connotations that might be obvious to an Israelite reader, the primary symbolism also references the Palm Tree’s resilience, fruitfulness, and uprightness.
Palm trees grow tall, and though they bend and sway in the wind, they remain upright – almost as if they are reaching toward the warm rays of the sun. If you search for images of beaches after a hurricane, you’ll see images of building debris and scattered rubbage among upright palm trees still standing. When everything else is in ruins, and destruction has had its way, it is the palm trees that still beckon people to look up. When everything feels hopeless and dead, those palm trees remain green – almost as if to say “life will go on.” In their unique way, the survival of palm trees is not only a way for the plant species to live on, but it’s as if God created palm trees as a symbol of hope after a storm.
And not just life, but fruitful life. Palm trees are known to produce fruit year-round – fruit that can be used in dozens of ways. Whether it’s a date palm or a coconut palm, both provide fruit with a recorded history of benefits when ingested or used for beauty or health regimens. Throughout the Bible, fruit is used as symbolism for growth and health. We are told that we will know the Spirit is working within someone by the fruit they bear. When Jesus gets angry and curses the fig tree, it’s because it won’t produce fruit in season. There is much talk of sowing and reaping and harvesting. And though many urban and suburban Americans are far removed from the concept of living off the land, we can all relate to the joy of eating ripe fruit. We’ve seen the nutrition facts, the dieticians’ advice, and the health studies that prove how beneficial different fruits are to our bodies. So whether palm trees are familiar or not, we know the value of a tree that produces fruit year-round!
When this passage tells us the righteous shall flourish like a palm tree, it’s not just talking about surviving. Flourishing includes fruitfulness. It also includes lush growth. More than any other foliage, I admire tropical plants and palm trees for the way they feel so full and vibrant when they are healthy and bright green!
How should we experience growth?
When we talk about Spiritual growth, we often think of all the spiritual disciplines we need to implement. We need to pray more, read our Bible more, spend more time with Jesus, do more for God, serve others more, etc. We burn ourselves out trying to be good enough. And oftentimes, it’s a losing game because we never feel like we’ve read the Bible or prayed or served enough to overcome our imperfection and insecurity.
But Jesus didn’t ask us to Be More for Him.
Trees don’t bear more fruit by bearing down and trying harder. In fact, the concept of a plant trying harder seems humorous. It’s the gardener that cultivates the soil, fertilizes the roots, prunes the branches back, and keeps the plant well watered. Even in the wild, the tree does not water or provide sunlight for itself. The things a tree cannot keep growing without are not provided by the tree.
When the Bible talks about growth, it tells us to be connected to The Vine. It mentions stories of farmers cultivating soil and spreading seed and harvesting, but it never says the vine or the fig tree need to harvest themselves. The plants’ jobs are to receive the water and the sunlight. To grow, we need to receive and be open to the work the Spirit is doing in us already. We should rest in the Father and trust Him to continue cultivating our soil. We need to stay connected to Him, but we don’t need to wrap our roots up in worry when the Great Gardener stands ready and waiting to cultivate our growth.
I’ve heard the metaphor used of deep roots. Devotionals say we need to grow our roots deep into the ground to stay secure and strong. Growing our roots deep in the Word or in God will help us. The funny thing is, Palm Trees don’t have big strong roots that grow deep. They actually have tons of small spindly roots that spread out wide instead of deep. This helps them to be flexible when the storms come. I don’t want to contrast palms with other plants because God can use those for different metaphors. But it’s worth remembering that when we find security in anything else than God himself, we are on shaky ground – even if our roots are deep. When you look at normal trees that were demolished by strong storms, sometimes their roots are still in the ground, but the tree trunk itself snapped in half. Being rigid and unmoving is not always the same thing as being resilient. Even palm trees can flourish, so maybe even when you feel like everything is unknown and shaky and everything around is crumbling – maybe even then you’ll find that your shaky bendy spindly trunk is resilient after all.
So how can I flourish like that?
Psalm 92 begins by praising God for the gift of being able to worship Him. As the Message says,
“What a beautiful thing, God, to give thanks,
to sing an anthem to you, the High God,
To announce your love each daybreak,
Sing your faithful presence all through the night” (vv. 1-3)
This Sabbath Psalm rejoices for the presence of God, and then talks about how fools don’t acknowledge Him.
It compares evil and unrighteous people to grass and weeds. After writing word pictures of the heavens and God’s glory, the author used analogies of garden nuances. Among these weed analogies, it says that God mows them down and they are scattered to the wind.
Interestingly, in some versions, it still uses the word “flourish” for the unrighteous grass. The evil people “flourishing” like grass doesn’t sound much like flourishing when you picture them being scattered to the wind. Though the passage itself doesn’t mention hurricanes, we’ve talked so much about them in regards to palm trees that it feels fitting to compare the unrighteous being “scattered by the wind” with the palm trees withstanding even the strongest winds. Though the unrighteous “flourish” temporarily, they are not fruitful or resilient. In fact, the passage uses language of them receiving direct opposition and consequences from God.
So, when we transition into the verse saying, “the righteous shall flourish like a palm tree” it’s a true contrast to the previous verses. Through the symbolism of both the palm tree and the cedar of Lebanon, both significant symbols in the Sanctuary of God and Scripture, we are given symbols of resilience, strength, and triumph. This is a very hopeful and worshipful psalm.
However, the end of the Psalm brings it all home. The source of this triumph is God himself.
“planted in the house of the Lord,
they will flourish in the courts of our God.
They will still bear fruit in old age,
they will stay fresh and green,
proclaiming, “The Lord is upright;
he is my Rock, and there is no wickedness in him.”
What’s absolutely gorgeous about this Psalm is the beauty of rest it displays. It is a psalm written for the Sabbath. It is sung to worship God for who he is, and in doing so, it proclaims the beauty of resting in Him. We often think of rest as either unproductive or depleting of resources. When we don’t go to work, we have less money. When we don’t do work around the house, we feel we won’t have enough time later. When we truly rest, we are required to release control.
But the psalmist doesn’t say, “this was a nice discipline, but I kinda regretted it later.” He says that the source of the flourishing and fruitfulness is being planted in the courts of God. When we release control and rest in God, things feel unpredictable. But if God doesn’t let Palm Trees snap like toothpicks in hurricanes, surely he knows a little something about how to help you flourish even in the stormiest circumstances. He doesn’t promise calm waters and clear skies, but he has a pretty significant track record of bringing calm in the chaos, something to stand on in the waves, and fruitfulness in the deserts.
After the chaos and storminess of 2020 and 2021, we really want 2022 to be a calm year. We want to regain control and find a new normal that feels a little less like surviving and more like thriving. But if it’s our goal to thrive, Psalm 22 joyfully proclaims the reality offered to us. We can flourish like grass soon to be scattered in the wind, or we can flourish like Palm Trees bearing fruit into old age. Neither requires us to be all-knowing, all-powerful, or all-present. We just need to be planted in the one who is!
