The view from my airplane window was striking: a narrow ribbon of ripening wheat fields and orchards wending between two barren mountains.  Running through the valley was a river.  Life-giving water, without which there would be no fruit.

Just as a bountiful harvest depends on a source of clean water, the quality of the “fruit” in my life—my words, actions, and attitude—depends on my spiritual nourishment.  The psalmist describes this in Psalm 1: the person “whose delight is in the law of the Lord…is like a tree planted by streams of water which yields its fruit in season” (v. 1-3).  And…