Psalm 52:8 Flourishing Olive

Psalm 52:8 But I am like an olive tree flourishing in the house of God; I trust in God's unfailing love for ever and ever.

Psalm 52 is again For the director of music and A maskil of David. We are told that it is from the time When Doeg the Edomite had gone to Saul and told him: David has gone to the house of Ahimelech. This may seem like a rather unpromising circumstance but after the initial rage at Doeg (1-4 Why do you boast of evil, you mighty man? Why do you boast all day long, you who are a disgrace in the eyes of God? etc), pronouncements of doom (5 Surely God will bring you down to everlasting ruin: He will snatch you up and tear you from your tent; he will uproot you from the land of the living) and the statement (6, 7) that The righteous will see and fear; they will laugh at him, saying, Here now is the man who did not make God his stronghold but trusted in his great wealth and grew strong by destroying others! David ends the psalm with very positive words concerning his own state, in verses 8 and 9. In verse 9 David says that he will praise God forever for what he has done. In your name I will hope he adds for your name is good. I will praise you in the presence of your saints. It is verse 8 that I want to focus on, however. There, using a common but powerful picture, David says But I am like an olive tree flourishing in the house of God. He had been in God's house and no doubt he had noticed the many olive trees depicted everywhere there. Or perhaps he had even seen a real one growing in the precincts and, by God's grace, it had encouraged him as it reminded him that he too would flourish under God. Speaking more plainly, he also says I trust in God's unfailing love for ever and ever. This is the reason why he was flourishing and why anyone at all flourishes. Keep putting your faith in God and his unfailing love and there will be hope and a future.