Trees of the Desert: ROTEM

**  The next few posts about "Desert Trees" has been highly shaped by the work of Nogah Hareuveni, one of the world's premier experts in biblical botany. I have used his work to help identify which trees in the Text are which; I experienced the desert lessons from my time in the desert with Ray VanderLaan.

Of the images that came out of the desert, my personal favorite was learning about the trees.

Now, I don't want to mislead you.  That comment was not designed to say that there were lots of trees in the desert; there are very few.  I didn't see groves of trees as I wandered around in the blistering heat — which is actually why the image of trees was so powerful.  I want to tell you about four trees in the desert.

ROTEM
The first “tree” comes in the form of a bush.  This tree, called rotem in the Hebrew, is also referred to as a broomtree.  It comes up in the Scriptures a number of times.  Hagar sets Ishmael under a rotem.  Elijah lies under a rotem and wants to die.  The broomtree is the desert's image of “shade.”  Prior to my time in the desert, I never noticed the passages of Scripture that mentioned shade; the picture just didn't jump out at me.  Now that I have spent time in the desert, I seem to notice any mention of shade in the Text.  The Bible is a book written to desert people — people who don't live in a land of shade.  When you live in desert, shade is an unbelievable relief and refuge from the heat of the day.

God is often referred to as our shade in the Text.  Psalm 121 says that the LORD is the shade at our right hand.  Isaiah 25 speaks of God like this:

Lord, you are my God;
    I will exalt you and praise your name,
for in perfect faithfulness
    you have done wonderful things,
    things planned long ago.
You have made the city a heap of rubble,
    the fortified town a ruin,
the foreigners’ stronghold a city no more;
    it will never be rebuilt.
Therefore strong peoples will honor you;
    cities of ruthless nations will revere you.
You have been a refuge for the poor,
    a refuge for the needy in their distress,
a shelter from the storm
    and a shade from the heat.
For the breath of the ruthless
    is like a storm driving against a wall
and like the heat of the desert.

 God is our rotem.  But what strikes you about the broomtree is its size.  It is not a large tree.  It is the size of a typical sagebrush, which teaches us an important lesson.  It is the lesson of just enough.  This is the rule of the desert.  God doesn't simply want to pour abundance into your life.  There are times and seasons where He may choose to do that, but the desert teaches us how to live by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.  It teaches us how to be content with just enough.  The rotem is not designed to be a massive shelter for total recuperation; the rotem is just enough shade to get us to the next stop along our journey.

This is who God shows Himself to be in our lives.

This is what God gives.

Just enough.

But the lesson doesn't end there.  We are also called to be rotem for others.

Isaiah speaks later about the time when Messiah would come.  He will say the following in chapter 32:

See, a king will reign in righteousness
    and rulers will rule with justice.
Each one will be like a shelter from the wind
    and a refuge from the storm,
like streams of water in the desert
    and the shadow of a great rock in a thirsty land.

The “king” who reigns in righteousness would be Messiah, but the rulers are plural.  Who are the rulers?  The rulers would be us.  There will be a King who will reign in righteousness and there will be rulers who rule with justice.  And each one of those rulers will be shelter, refuge, water — and shade.

Your calling is to be shade for others in their desert.

Now you don't have to be the answer to all their questions or perform miracles.  You aren't called to be a gigantic oak tree.  You are called to be shade.

Just enough.

We can all do that.  We can all be people who provide the refreshing relief for others on their journey — who allow them to make it to the next step.  We can be rotem.  So go and find people in their desert.  Go and provide some shade for the exhausted and water for the thirsty.  The desert has taught us to be people who put God on display.