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Our Daily Bread Ministries May 17 Bible in a Year: 1 Chronicles 1-3; John 5:25-47 Deep Roots Blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord. Jeremiah 17:7 READ Jeremiah 17:5-8 As Douglas Kent, a landscape architect, toured a charred Los Angeles neighborhood after the city’s raging 2025 wildfires, he encountered a shocking surprise—trees, alive and green, right next to melted cars and burned buildings. Many of them bore lush palms and leaves, abundant fruit, and strong trunks and branches. How? After two consecutive rainy winters, the trees’ roots had reached deep into the soil to draw moisture, carrying it to branches and leaves. In a fire, they proved resistant. “What I saw,” said Kent, “was that if you were deep-rooted, you survived.” Our faith during the fiery trials of life can be like that. As we set our spiritual roots deep in Christ and His love, we become “like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit” (Jeremiah 17:8). Jeremiah, who never minced words, warned that those who trust in “mere flesh” are “cursed” (v. 5). “That person will be like a bush in the wastelands; they will not see prosperity when it comes.” Instead, “they will dwell in the parched places of the desert, in a salt land where no one lives” (vv. 5-6). How much better to trust in God! Well-watered by His sustaining love, we thrive even in raging times, bearing spiritual fruit in Him. By Patricia Raybon REFLECT & PRAY How deep are your roots in Christ? How can you trust Him during fiery trials? Dear God, as the world seems to burn around me, please remind me to trust in You. Amen.