Riches Fall; The Righteous Branch Flourishes

He that trusteth in his riches shall fall—a common tendency among those who mistake temporal wealth for spiritual foundation. Trusting in riches is spiritually unsatisfactory and necessarily evanescent. When this catastrophe of falling comes, it strikes in four dimensions: the soul falls from all his hopes; he falls to disappointment and despair; he falls whenever moral conviction seizes the soul, whether before or after death; and he falls because wealth was never a fit foundation for the human spirit.

But the righteous shall flourish as a branch. Even in the darkest periods of history, the righteous have endured because they lean not on their own stem and live not on their own root. From antiquity, Jesus—to whom we now look—was made known to faith. The nature and source of spiritual life remained constant across ages, though the manner of revealing truth varied widely.

Yet not all branches flourish equally. When cares, vanities, and passions wrap themselves tightly round a soul, they impede the sap's flow from the stem, leaving extremities to wither. When the world grasps the life in any form, it chokes the secret channels between the disciple and his Lord, and unripe fruit drops to the ground. Christians possess no independent source of life and growth. Only as a branch—joined to Christ the Vine—can they flourish in this wilderness, drawing sustenance from the root that never fails.