Three years. He has stopped counting in months.
The first year everybody said it would break. The second year they said it in a different tone, and a couple of them stopped saying it. This year nobody says anything at all except one man at the market who says it every single time, cheerfully, and who has a job in town.
He is not bitter about the man in town. He is just done with the sentence.
Because he has now heard it will break perhaps four hundred times, and every one of those was said kindly, and every one of them was a prediction about weather made by somebody who cannot make weather, and the accumulated weight of four hundred failed predictions is a specific kind of tiredness that nobody warns you about.
He does not need to be told it will break. He needs something to stand in while it does not.
And the church has been kind, and the church has mostly given him more predictions with verses attached, which are the same sentence with a heavier weight on the end of it, and he has stopped going to the Wednesday thing because he cannot take another one.
A tree in a drought, and what is promised about the drought
For he shall be as a tree planted by the waters, and that spreadeth out her roots by the river, and shall not see when heat cometh, but her leaf shall be green; and shall not be careful in the year of drought, neither shall cease from yielding fruit (Jeremiah 17:8).
Now read that carefully, because it is the only passage I know that says the thing you actually need.
Look at what it does not say. It does not say the drought will not come. It says: in the year of drought. The drought is in the verse. It is assumed. It arrives, and the tree is standing in it.
And look at what it does say. Her leaf shall be green. Not: her leaf shall be green afterwards. Green in it. During. While the heat is on and the year is dry.
That is not a promise about weather. It is a promise about a tree during weather.
You are being promised something for the middle of it rather than something after it. That is what the verse actually offers, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes a promise like that hold a man up on dry ground, because Scripture calls Him living water, which is a supply that does not come out of the sky.
Four hundred predictions
Let me say something about the tiredness, because I do not think anybody has named it.
Every prediction you have been handed was an act of kindness by somebody who could not deliver it. And the strange cruelty of that is that each one asks you to hope again, in a specific way, on a specific timeline, and then quietly expires, and nobody comes back to acknowledge it.
Four hundred of those is not a small thing to carry, and it has made you flinch at a sentence shape rather than at God, which is a distinction almost nobody around you can see.
And I am not going to add one. This article does not contain a prediction about your rain. I do not know when it breaks and neither does the man at the market.
You are not being asked to hope on a timeline nobody can guarantee. The word never once promises a person that a hard season ends on a date, and it is the Holy Spirit who supplies endurance in the middle of a thing, which Scripture calls patience and lists as fruit rather than as an achievement.
Where the roots are
Here is the mechanism in the verse and it is a farming mechanism, which is why it will land on you and would not land on the man in town.
The tree is not green because the year is good. It is green because of where the roots are. Spread out by the river, which means they are reaching water that the surface does not have and the sky is not supplying.
A tree in a drought is drawing from a source that has nothing to do with the weather. That is the entire image, and it is why the verse can promise green leaves in a dry year without promising rain.
You have a source that the weather has no access to. Scripture puts the greenness down to the roots and not to the season, and the Holy Spirit is described as a well of water springing up inside a person (John 4:14), which is a supply that runs during the drought and not after it.
And I will keep it plain, because you have had enough of the other thing. Nothing in this article says the drought breaks and nothing in it says the three years were for something. I do not know and I am not going to pretend. What is settled is what the verse promises, which is a tree that is green in the year of drought, and that is a promise about now.
So today you go and stand on the dry ground and read a verse about a tree that is green in the year of drought.
On the dry ground. Not on the good bit. The part that shows it worst, because a man like you will not accept a promise read anywhere except in front of the actual evidence.
And read it as it is written, without adding anything to the end. No prediction. No and it will break soon. The verse does not say that and neither will you.
Green in the year of drought. Full stop. That is the promise and it is enough and it is for now.
You have leaves that stay green while the year stays dry. The word puts the greenness down to roots that reach a river the sky knows nothing about, and it is the Holy Spirit who is that supply inside a person, which is why the promise works during and not after.
Declare this over yourself
Now speak, standing on that ground. You are in Christ, and the supply you are drawing from is in Him and does not come out of the sky. Scripture is the ground under every line and the Holy Spirit is the one who lands it. What God does about the rain and about the next three years is His to decide, and He may answer in a way and at a time nobody here can predict. What He has said about a tree in the year of drought is a promise about now.
- Sentence that says it will break, you have been said four hundred times and you are not a promise. Scripture says her leaf shall be green in the year of drought, and that verse never once mentions rain arriving.
- Tiredness that flinches at a sentence, you are named out here today. In the name of Jesus I stand on what is written, because the word says the roots reach a river, and a river underneath is not weather and it never was.
- Father, my leaf is green in the year of drought and the drought is still on. I thank You that by Your Spirit the supply is underneath and not overhead, and I am standing on the driest part of it saying so.
Jeremiah 17:8
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