From Jerusalem to En Gedi, the palm trees of Israel stand strong and tall. They grow anywhere in the desert where there is water because the root grows deep.
The Bible says that “The righteous shall flourish like a palm tree” (Psalm 92:12). Dig deep into the Word of the God—tap into that secret, unseen water source, even when all around you is dry and dusty and rocky—and you will begin to flourish!
Can’t. hold. you. down.
Date palms grow to about 70 feet in height—that’s about seven stories tall. I love passing date palm farms smack in the middle of the Judean Wilderness near the Dead Sea—row after row of these beauties stretching to the sky and doing their fruit-bearing! What a visual for us.
But—date-growing—and spiritual maturity—can take time! They estimate it takes four to eight years for a date palm to start bearing fruit, and up to ten years to have enough fruit to really make a business of it. That’s an exercise in patience. An investment in the future. Slow and steady wins the race.
Archaeologically, we know that the date palm has been around for millennia. Thousands of years. We find their seeds as happened at the Masada excavations in the 1960s where 2,000-year-old seeds were uncovered in an ancient storage jar! About 40 years later, the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies at Kibbutz Ketura germinated one. Methuselah-the-palm tree was born.
Date palm seeds come in male and female form and… only the females can bear fruit. (You figured that one out, right?) Therefore, you might need only one male tree to pollinate a whole grove of female trees which is accomplished by farm workers or by the wind. So Methuselah grew up and yes, he’s making babies! (Happy belated Father’s Day to you, M-man….)
Interestingly, they discovered that the Judean date palm, featured on coins from ancient times to the present and a symbol of Israelite freedom, genetically came from a type originating in North Africa/Egypt. This according to Elaine Solowey of the Arava Institute as reported in National Geographic in 2015.
Get it? Egypt. As in the Exodus-out-of-Egypt circa 1446 BC. Of course, could have been Egyptian armies packing their favorite dried snack food as they marched against Canaan around the same era. Or, it could have been the Israelites marching toward the Promised Land and storing a few seeds for the new homeland.
The dates aren’t talking and telling us their story. Mums the word. But they’re tossing a few clues our way!
Stand tall. Stand strong. Dig deep and thrive, no matter what surrounds you. Growth and fruitfulness are on the way!
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