"When You Shall Come to the Land..."

A pomegranate ripening
on the vine in Nazareth
on my last visit, 2018

Almost every winter growing up, I received a crisp white certificate in the mail, suitable for framing. Not a single thing on it changed from year to year except the date stamp. It featured the very same watercolor print: a springtime tree awash in all shades of green, surrounded by verdant hills and groves of trees. And, below the tree is this beautiful directive from God, printed in both Hebrew and English: 

"When you shall come to the land, you shall plant trees." Leviticus 19:23

If you come from a Jewish upbringing, you know this lovely piece of cardstock. You could see it in your head without me even describing it. This unmistakeable certificate graces homes and synagogues and classrooms even today. You may have a whole stack of them from your bubbe (grandma), each with the printed proclamation that a tree will be planted in your honor - or as a thank you, or in loving memory of a dear one - in Israel. Or maybe a ring of trees, or an entire orchard of trees.

But why now, in the dead of winter? It may seem strange to think about planting trees in January. It's blustery and the ground is frozen - at least it is where I live. But trees are on our collective Jewish minds today, because it is Tu B'Shevat - affectionately known as the Jewish New Year for Trees, or - more accurately - the birthday for trees. 

jnf.org

Tu B'Shevat is literally the "fifteenth of" the Hebrew month "Shevat." But the reason we call it the birthday for trees is that, on Shevat 15, God said to mark which trees were three years old, four years old, and older than five. Fruit from the baby trees was to be left alone. No eating it, no tithing it, literally derive no benefit from it. Fruit of the four-year-olds belonged to God. Then finally, after the trees' fifth birthday, the fruit not only counted toward the tithe, but could now also grace the tables. 

There's something unsaid in these instructions that encourages me to no end: God gave directions for how to handle growing bounty to people who were wandering around as nomads in the desert. In fact, the Israelites were just beginning their forty-year odyssey through the wilderness. 

For four decades - a full generation - God's people wouldn't be able to put down roots. No planting groves of olive trees or cultivating fields of grain. No designing orchards of fig and pomegranate, with walls draped with grape vines and sheltered by majestic palms.* And yet, here God was, giving them instructions for managing abundance in the Promised Land. 

He could have waited until the Israelites were entering the Land. Or He could have given them the instructions through Joshua, when the tribes readied to disperse and settle in their assigned regions of Canaan. He could have, but He didn't. 

And so I don't see a command in this passage as much as I see a promise: reaching the Promised Land was a forgone conclusion. It wasn't if you arrive, but "When you shall come into the land..." That promise must have sustained their hearts through the long journey just as tangibly as the manna from heaven and water from the rock sustained their bodies. God is so kind to us, even when the road is rough and seems interminably long.

In so many ways, the Israelites' long sojourn from Egypt to Canaan is a parallel to our own journey through life. They walked from the saving sacrifice of the lambs on Passover to finally crossing the Jordan into the abundance of the Promised Land. Today, our lives are a journey through "the already and the not yet," making our way from the saving sacrifice of the one Lamb toward the permanent abundance of eternity - namely, the abundance of God's glorious Light and the absence of death's excruciating thorns. 

On this exodus road, we are sustained by an even greater promise than the agricultural abundance of a physical land. We are sustained by the One we celebrated just a few short weeks ago. The Messiah's coming-alongsideness soothes us when we're scorched in the dry and desolate wilderness, and warms us when we shiver uncontrollably in the bleak and frozen winter. We may reach the edge of our journey singed and frostbit, but even so, we will have reached the greater Promised Land. The eternal Promised Land where a flourishing awaits that we even cannot begin to fathom. 

So today, on this birthday of trees, I will look out on the baby dogwood outside my study window, the one that bore only two blooms last year, and know that she is growing in ways I cannot see. That her roots are pushing down and branching out and receiving nourishment for the long haul, when her flourishing will create such a thick cloud of blossoms that I'll no longer see the road that stretches out behind her. 

In the meantime, I will celebrate the bounty God has given in so many ways, through all things great and small. I will celebrate His promise-keeping to my ancestors in the wilderness, and to me in this present journey to the greater Land. 

Praise the Lord for He is good, His goodness is eternal!

Psalm 106, 107, 118, 136; 2 Chronicles 20 

* These are the "seven species" of crops that God named when describing the bounty of Israel just before they crossed over the Jordan: "The Eternal your God is bringing you into a good land, a land ... of wheat and barley, of [grape] vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of oil-rich olive trees and date honey." Deuteronomy 8:7-8 The Voice

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