Blessed Is the Man

Blessed Is the Man
By M.T. Clark — P-2091 | 10/10/2026 – Today’s Audio Podcast
Today’s Message on YouTube:

Today’s photo of the ornamental wishing-well at sunset in my yard at Riverhouse, our place down by the Hudson in Stuyvesant, NY, comes to us from yours truly, as I captured this first sunset of the month on October 1, 2026.

Well, it’s Saturday, and as I prepare to enter into the Vermont woods on a family backpacking trip later today with my wife, her brother Steve, and the outdoorsy children who are willing, I am seeking the Lord’s peace as I will undoubtedly be challenged to be at peace within myself and with others this weekend.  

Although I “camped” with my family growing up (in a pop-up camper that was eventually upgraded to a travel trailer) for a few summers at the Lake George RV Park and for one trip to New Smyrna Beach, Florida, and Disney World, I only really got into backpacking to be alone with my wife.  I have somewhat introverted tendencies, and although I loved the trips that TammyLyn and I have had at the Merck Forrest & Farmland Center’s Nenorod Cabin, I am a little less enthused about the prospect of going camping (or cabining) with a host of others.  As good as my childhood experiences of camping with my family were, there was often drama and stress. And I am a little anxious, wondering if I will encounter some because of my travelling companions today and tomorrow, and I am wondering about how I will do too.

When things don’t go swimmingly when people are away from home and traveling, their worst selves can rise to the surface. People’s selfishness or their lack of maturity, patience, or self-control can really get exposed in the close quarters of living together.  But enough about me… those other people can be a real problem too.  If you want to know what someone is really like, go traveling with them. You will see who is “high maintenance” quickly enough.  I have travelled with some who I will never travel with again. So, I am praying that we will all get along and I will be able to relax and enjoy camping with others as much as I enjoy camping with just me and my wife. 

With anxieties confessed, I would like to confess that God has really blessed me with a new family and an opportunity to grow closer to some of them through this shared wilderness experience.  Speaking of being blessed,    

Our series, “The Beatitudes,” takes a look at the first time Scripture uses the words “blessed is the man,” and what the Psalmist means when he says them.

Blessed Is the Man

The book of Psalms opens with a blessing before it ever opens with a prayer, a complaint, or a praise song. Psalm 1:1-3 (NKJV) tells us this:

“Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the path of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful; but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in his law he meditates day and night. He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that brings forth its fruit in its season, whose leaf also shall not wither; and whatever he does shall prosper.”

Psalm 1 begins the way the Sermon on the Mount later begins, with the word blessed, and that is not an accident. Scripture roots the life that we actually want in a decision about who we are listening to, and the first thing that David does in Psalm 1 is to tell us who the blessed man refuses to listen to. He walks past the ungodly’s counsel instead of taking it in. He does not stand in the sinner’s path and settle. He never gets comfortable enough in the scorner’s chair to pull it up to the table. Walking, standing, sitting — the three verbs move from the casual to the committed, and the Psalmist of Israel is telling us that compromising with the ungodly is how most people end up in seats they never meant to occupy. Nobody wakes up one morning and decides to live scornfully. We are shown scornfulness, consider it, and then try it out for ourselves, often with an unconscious motivation to “be like everyone else” or to please the scornful people in our lives.

But the Psalm doesn’t define the blessed man by what he avoids. It defines him by what he delights in. His delight is in the law of the Lord. The Hebrew word used here for delight, ḥēp̄eṣ, isn’t duty. It’s pleasure. It’s the pull you feel toward the thing you love. The blessed man meditates on God’s Word day and night — not because he has to keep himself in line, but because he cannot stay away from it for very long.

And then comes the picture: a tree planted by the rivers of water.

I want us to notice the verb, (šāṯal, planted) because almost everybody skips over it. The Psalmist doesn’t say the man is like a tree that found its way to a river. He says planted. Somebody else did the planting. The tree didn’t locate its own soil, dig itself in, or route the water. The Gardener did all of it. That one verb is doing more theology than most of us notice on the first read, because it means the blessed life is not something we engineer. It is something God puts us in. God plants us where we need to grow.

We can learn a lot from nature, and trees planted by rivers do a few things that are worth paying attention to. They do not move. They do not negotiate with the weather. They send their roots down toward water they cannot see and trust that it is still coming. They bear fruit, but they bear it in its season, not whenever they feel productive and not whenever the other trees happen to. Their leaves do not wither in a dry stretch, because their roots have gone deeper than a drought can reach.

Then the last line of the passage gives us the promise of living the “blessed” life: “whatever he does shall prosper.” That isn’t a promise about bank accounts and portfolios. It is a promise about fruit. A tree planted by a river is prosperous in the way a tree is supposed to be prosperous. It does what trees are supposed to do, and it does it consistently over decades. That is the kind of life David is picturing, and it is the kind of life that the Lord is forming in people who keep their delight in Him.

I am going to a cabin in Vermont with no electricity and with people who will be carrying more than their backpacks. This is the family God has planted me in, and I’ll do my best this week to remember Psalm 1 and to be firmly planted in my delight in God and all He has provided me with. I’ll try to be rooted in my faith and let the fruit of God’s joy and peace grow in me and be on display for the others to see.  When we are blessed, we have to live like we are blessed, and that means being steady and fruitful wherever the Lord plants us.  

May the Lord deepen our roots this weekend, slow us down enough to notice the river we are already planted by, and remind us that He blesses those who delight in Him.

Keep on walking and talking with God.

— M.T.

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“The views, opinions, and commentary of this publication are those of the author, M.T. Clark, only, and do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of any of the photographers, artists, ministries, or other authors of the other works that may be included in this publication, and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of any entities the author may represent.”

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