The Tree That Thrives on Stone

High in the White Mountains of eastern California, where the soil is almost pure limestone and rainfall barely reaches ten inches a year, stands a bristlecone pine named Methuselah. It is over 4,800 years old — the oldest known living tree on earth. Scientists expected to find the most ancient trees in lush valleys with rich soil and abundant water. Instead, they found them clinging to barren ridgelines at 11,000 feet, battered by ice storms, rooted in rock.

Here is what puzzled researchers most: bristlecone pines growing in favorable conditions actually die younger. The trees with easy access to water and nutrients grow quickly but rot from the inside. The ones starved of every comfort grow slowly, and their wood becomes so dense that neither fungus nor insects can penetrate it. Deprivation produces a kind of strength that abundance never could.

Habakkuk understood this. He looked out at fields producing nothing — no figs, no grapes, no olives, no livestock — and instead of collapsing, he declared, "Yet I will rejoice in the Lord." Something in him had grown so dense with trust that circumstances could not rot it from within. The Sovereign Lord had become his strength, making his feet sure on the heights where nothing else could survive.

The harshest ground sometimes grows the deepest faith. Not in spite of the barrenness, but through it.