Biblical scholar Elizabeth Robar, in a recent communication from Scriptura wrote about the metaphors of grass and trees in Psalm 92. There it says that the wicked spring up like grass, but the righteous flourish like a palm tree and grow like the cedars of Lebanon. As both seem to flourish, she asked what the difference was. The answer she gave was time.
Grass grows quickly and “looks wonderfully successful – but it doesn’t last. A tree, however, can last forever, even as “growth happens slowly, season after season.” And as Psalm 92 points, such trees can “still bear fruit in old age.”
This is an encouragement to us doing the work of campus ministry, where we throw out seeds: some become grass, some become choked by weeks, and yet still some become trees where we only see the fruit years later. As Robar notes, Psalm 92 invites us to recognize that “The work, repetition, waiting, disappointments, and joys of an ordinary life can all become places where God forms people who are rooted enough to bear fruit for decades.”