Psalm 1:3

timing is everything

And he shall be like a tree which is planted near the running waters, which shall bring forth its fruit, in due season. And his leaf shall not fall off: and all whatsoever he shall do shall prosper. (Psalm 1:3 DR)

There’s nothing worse than the wrong timing in the delivery of a joke.

The setup can be amazing, the punchline heavy-hitting. But if the timing is even slightly off, the entire thing can fall flat.

What’s true in the most banal of things like humor is even more true when things get serious. We are told in Ecclesiastes that—

All things have their season, and in their times all things pass under heaven. A time to be born and a time to die. A time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted. A time to kill, and a time to heal. A time to destroy, and a time to build. A time to weep, and a time to laugh. A time to mourn, and a time to dance. A time to scatter stones, and a time to gather. A time to embrace, and a time to be far from embraces. A time to get, and a time to lose. A time to keep, and a time to cast away. A time to rend, and a time to sew. A time to keep silence, and a time to speak. A time of love, and a time of hatred. A time of war, and a time of peace. (Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 DR)

And while God is without time, and thus without the necessity of doing things at the right time, there is nevertheless a sort of divine timing in which God chooses to act on the temporal plane at some times rather than others. It is not borne out of some compulsion to fit a timeline, but rather that the mundane is being synchronized, so to speak, with divine time:

He hath made all things good in their time, and hath delivered the world to their consideration, so that man cannot find out the work which God hath made from the beginning to the end. (Ecclesiastes 3:11 DR)

In considering Psalm 1:3, St. Augustine sees the righteous man as a figure of Christ, or as Christ himself, and thus the bringing forth of fruit is the culmination of his mission, Passion, resurrection and glorification:

That tree then, that is, our Lord, from the running streams of water, that is, from the sinful people's drawing them by the way into the roots of His discipline, will bring forth fruit, that is, will establish Churches; in His season, that is, after He has been glorified by His Resurrection and Ascension into heaven. For then, by the sending of the Holy Ghost to the Apostles, and by the confirming of their faith in Him, and their mission to the world, He made the Churches to bring forth fruit. (St. Augustine, Expositions on the Psalms, 1, 3.)

The tree is said to bring forth fruit in due season, or— as St. Augustine notes— in His season. The sacrifice of Christ was not an arbitrary event in the course of human history, but in a sense was its very fulcrum, that for which time itself existed. St. Paul says:

But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent his Son, made of a woman, made under the law: That he might redeem them who were under the law: that we might receive the adoption of sons. (Galatians 4:4-5 DR)

He similarly tells the Romans:

For why did Christ, when as yet we were weak, according to the time, die for the ungodly? (Romans 5:6 DR)

The fruit that springs from this tree— that is, from Christ— is the Church itself which in the divine timing spreads throughout the whole world.

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For this animation I went with some mixed media. I found a great image of a dove and composited it with a photo of a crucifix. I added in some movement with this repeating floral pattern (which required a lot of manual masking and positioning…) to give the sense of fruit coming forth from Christs mission.

By juxtaposing the dove and the cross, I wanted to capture the essence of the tree planted near running waters (as St. Augustine also sees an image of baptism here).

I also just liked how the floral pattern looked, so I thought it’d make a striking and slightly unexpected element within the design.

Enjoy.

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View a higher quality version of this gif here: