Planted by the Stream

Sunday, February 16, 2025 – Jeremiah 17:5-10, Psalm 1, 1 Corinthians 15:12-20, Luke 6:17-26.

In the Spring of 2009, I left my home in north Georgia and headed to Cullman, Alabama for five days of silence with a group of Benedictine nuns. I had previously spent silent days with both the Jesuits and the Trappists and found time away in silence to be very restorative.

Christians have been doing this for millennia, inspired in large part by Jesus himself, who had spent the overnight prior to our gospel reading on a mountaintop in prayer. Jesus made it a regular practice to go away from the others so he could tune in to hear the voice of God before he acted in the world.

We need that grounding in the sacred if our lives are to be led by the Spirit of God. We choose every day – every moment really – whether or not we will live with God, like trees planted by the stream, or whether we will go our own way instead.

When I headed to Sacred Heart Monastery, I was seeking a change in my life. I knew I’d be heading to the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago in the Fall, and I was terrified that I’d finish my academic journey and still not be able to put a decent life together.

I’d been working with a spiritual director for several years, another longtime Christian practice. Mine was an Episcopal priest in Atlanta named Lynnsay and I found working with her to be an amazing experience. At one point, I described an image of wholeness that kept returning again and again to my mind – that of a tree that was both rooted in the earth and able to flexibly bend with the wind.

I was tired of feeling like I was constantly at the mercy of the winds of emotion and change that kept knocking me over.

Often, Lynnsay would suggest biblical passages to use in my prayer life, and when I spoke of the tree, she immediately mentioned our readings today from Jeremiah and Psalm 1.

The images of trees planted by streams of water being fed and nourished by God were powerful. I prayed with those texts and even drew a picture of that tree as a mandala of wholeness.

I went to Sacred Heart Monastery with my pen and journal, armed and ready to hear something from God that would help. I arrived on a Monday afternoon and after eating dinner, I headed to my room, ready to listen. I prayed and took out my journal. But all I got was silence.

I don’t mean good and peaceful silence. I mean the kind of crickets silence that leaves you feeling utterly ignored. I went to God with heart in hand begging for help and got no response, no sense of a listening presence whatsoever.

And that made me really mad. I had carved out five days and spent real money to be in that place. I showed up, and I wanted God to show up too.

How many times have you asked God for help and felt like you were ignored? How many times have you done what you thought God wanted and still nothing changed for the better?

Sometimes it seems as if God goes into hiding. And that’s very hard on our hearts.

Now if you’re cheeky like me, you might even be so crazy as to give God an ultimatum. On that lonely Monday evening, I ranted and raved for a good hour (kind of the way Job does), and I finally told God that He had until Friday to show up for me or we were done.

I basically played the drama queen diva card.

I kept showing up though. Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday morning, I sat in silence. I prayed. I walked the labyrinth. Still, no word from the heavens.

Finally on Thursday, I went to mid-morning worship with the nuns, and while I waited for the service to begin, I prayed again for help. I said, “God, please. Give me the tree. I want the tree.”

The service began and a sister climbed the stairs to the lectern. And what did my astonished ears hear? The Jeremiah reading about the tree.

And then Psalm 1 about the tree.

This is what psychologist Carl Jung called a synchronicity – when the outer world mirrors something in our inner world in a meaningful way.
For me, it was a miracle.

What I heard in those readings was something like this: “No, Sheri, we’re not done. I’m here with you, I love you, and I hear you, even though I’m not giving you exactly what you think you need right now.”

That experience changed me.

Every day, we have a choice. Will we place our trust in “mere mortals” or will we plant ourselves by the streams of God? Will we place our lives like poor beggars and children into the arms of God and thereby claim our place in God’s kingdom? Or will we choose instead to believe we can go it alone like the rich and powerful, and end up with a bushel of woe?

Be assured, to choose to live with God requires trust that even when God is hidden or silent, God is still with us – loving and guiding us and seeking our flourishing.

But here’s the thing. That trust is only possible when we share our stories of how God showed up for us. This is what the Body of Christ is for – to be that web of faith that holds each one of us when we can’t stand alone or when we’re wracked by doubt.

Can we tell our stories? Can we tell them not just to each other, but to the people out there who are so desperate to hear them?

What is your story? I want to hear it. We need to hear it.