How well are the psalms understood? The parables seem more accessible, but are they? And as familiar as we are with the texts of the psalms and the parables, how open are we to new perspectives on them?
The studies in Like a Tree Planted, the first volume in the Connections series, encourage readers to deepen their understanding of the psalms and parables and to grow in their relationship with God. Like a Tree Planted invites reflection on eight pairs of psalms and parables by highlighting their shared metaphor. These images, familiar from our everyday lives as well as from both testaments, encourage fresh insights from familiar scriptural texts.
The psalms presented here, all from the first book of the Psalter, and the parables, selected from Luke's Gospel, speak deeply and collaboratively through figures of the tree, our stature and status, searching faces, feelings of entitlement and responsiveness, the ecosystem, shepherding, the storehouse, and "the other side."
An introductory chapter in Like a Tree Planted introduces readers to the process of reading metaphorically, and a concluding chapter draws implications from the reading of these particular psalm and parable texts as a set.