It Is Permitted to Aspire to Success and Stability

I often find myself wondering: once it is clear to me that God — blessed be He — governs all of creation and arranges everything that is truly good for me, is there anything left for me to strive toward? Is there something that God actually wants me to hope for, to desire, to long to achieve — beyond the longing for a genuine connection with Him?

When I turned to the Book of Psalms, I discovered that King David — peace be upon him — speaks directly to the person whose delight is in the Torah of God, who meditates on it day and night. He says of such a person:

He shall be like a tree planted by streams of water, that yields its fruit in its season, whose leaf does not wither — and in all that he does, he prospers. (Psalm 1:3)

This struck me deeply. King David is not speaking here about the reward stored up for those who toil in Torah in the World to Come. Nor is he speaking about reward in this world in some abstract sense. His words describe something more concrete: rootedness in life — being like a tree so firmly planted that it neither needs to be uprooted nor can be. Its fruits come in their proper season. Even its leaves do not wither. And everything it does succeeds.

By contrast, of the wicked he says:

They are like chaff that the wind drives away. (Psalm 1:4)

What struck me here was seeing in these verses a kind of aspiration for life — that is, the recognition that a person is meant to strive for rootedness, for the desire to bear fruit. This, it turns out, is what God wants from us: to give forth to others (like a tree, which passes its fruit outward), to offer strength and shelter to the people around us (“whose leaf does not wither” — providing resilience for those nearby), and to succeed in whatever we undertake.

Above all: to be established and deeply planted — and not to be swept away by every passing wind.