Today I am thinking about rootedness. Jeremiah 17 speaks of rootedness on land beside the river, and Ezekiel 47 speaks of trees with leaves for healing: a biblical vision of rootedness in which trees participate in God’s sustaining and healing ecology.
A tree does not begin where we can see it. What appears above the ground is already a kind of overflow of something deeper, slower, less available to sight. Roots are not simply structures of stability. They play a vital role in river ecology by preventing soil erosion, filtering pollutants from the water, and creating a shaded refuge for fish and aquatic wildlife while also providing nutrients for thriving green leaves that provide shade for the birds.
Trees in both of these ecological systems need strong, well-developed root systems. Estuary plants use complex roots to resist tidal currents, waves, and shifting muds, just as terrestrial plants use roots to withstand wind, scorching heat, and to anchor themselves into solid ground. Trees and rivers have an intertwined history; they shape one another. Submerged roots, whether in riverside groves or estuaries, participate in processes that hold life together without announcing how they do so. Their hidden work, finds space for fish, birds, and insects to continue a good life.
Rootedness, then, is not only survival or adaptation. It is participation or a way of remaining within pressures that do not resolve (like the mixing of salt and fresh waters, high and low tides), of receiving what comes without fully mastering its source (rootedness doesn’t control the river or the sun). Rootedness is being shaped by conditions that are both a gift and an excess.
And if people are like trees, perhaps they, too, bear witness to and participate in the flow of the river of God.
In Scripture, rootedness is not isolation but participation in the flourishing of land, water, and community. Even during war (Deut 20), fruit trees are protected because they sustain future life and are not expendable, and wood for the trees is good (I wonder what Exodus 15:22-26 would offer here). Trees and rivers thus become intertwined symbols of endurance, healing, restraint, and divine life flowing through creation.