The Redwood's Canopy

In Northern California's Humboldt County, coastal redwoods tower over three hundred feet into the fog. But something remarkable happens beneath them. Dr. Emily Burns, a forest ecologist at Save the Redwoods League, has documented how the massive canopy of a mature redwood creates an entirely different world at its base. Temperatures stay ten to fifteen degrees cooler in summer. Moisture drips steadily from needles that comb water straight out of the fog. Ferns, sorrel, and delicate huckleberry bushes flourish in that sheltered understory — plants that would wither and die if exposed to the open hillside just fifty yards away.

The smaller plants do not generate their own protection. They simply grow close to something enormously larger than themselves.

This is the picture the psalmist paints when he writes, "He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty." That Hebrew word for "dwell" — yashab — does not mean a quick visit. It means to sit down, to settle in, to make your home there. The psalmist is not describing someone who occasionally darts under God's canopy when the weather turns bad. He is describing someone who has planted their entire life in the shade of El Shaddai, the Almighty.

And notice what happens to those who dwell there: they rest. Not strive. Not perform. Rest. Like the ferns beneath the redwood, our flourishing comes not from our own strength but from the nearness of the One whose shadow is our shelter.