Green in the year of drought

Jeremiah’s tree has weathered the same heat as every other tree in the region. That is the detail to catch: the blessing is not a different climate. Heat comes; the drought year arrives on schedule. The difference is entirely underground — roots spread out by the river, drinking from what the surface weather cannot reach.

“Shall not be careful in the year of drought” uses the old sense of careful: full of care, anxious. The rooted tree is not anxious in the drought because its supply was never the rainfall. Anxiety, for people as for trees, is usually a supply question — and the answer is not better weather but deeper water.

Roots spread in the unremarkable seasons, long before the drought proves them. Every morning spent by the river — this verse, this prayer, this small returning — is root-work. Nobody sees it, and nothing seems to depend on it, until the hot year comes and your leaf, inexplicably, stays green.