The Promise Planted in Johnny Appleseed's Orchards

In 1806, John Chapman — better known as Johnny Appleseed — planted a small nursery of apple trees along the banks of Owl Creek in north-central Ohio. He would never taste most of the fruit. He would never sit in the shade of their full canopy. He planted with bare feet and a burlap sack, then moved on, trusting the soil and the seasons to do what he could not.

What Chapman could not have imagined is that some of those original rootstock lines still produce fruit today, more than two hundred years later. His trees outlasted the frontier, outlasted the Civil War, outlasted everything he knew.

David wanted to build God a house. It was a noble impulse — the king looking at his cedar palace and feeling the awkwardness of the Almighty dwelling in a tent. But God flipped the blueprint. "I will establish a house for you," the Lord declared through Nathan. Not a house of timber and stone, but a dynasty, a lineage, a kingdom that would endure forever.

David's hands would not build it. His eyes would not see its completion. But the promise was as certain as sunrise because it rested not on David's effort but on God's faithfulness.

Sometimes El Shaddai asks us to plant what we will never harvest — and promises that what He establishes will outlast everything we know. The house God builds needs no renovation.