Mel’s Tree
Fallow
Thank God for beloved friends to discuss the issues at hand. We can know we are never alone as we suffer through our human condition. One evening we discussed how the ground brings forth growth. Be it fruit, vegetables, flowers or the ever-abundant weeds, the ground will grow plants.
I believe it is every seven years a field, once plowed and yielding crops, is supposed to lie fallow. The purpose is to replenish the nutrients that have been used up by the harvests gathered there. Without that time of restoration, the yields would become thinner and thinner.
Plowed Up
I wondered how that might apply to a soul. Once plowed, how does a soul become fallow once again? Only, what if the ground becomes hardened instead? What if, in place of allowing vitamins to soak in, the rocks collect?
There is a hymn that sings about us being prone to wander away from the God we love. In time, we feel it. The emptiness. We feel insults that come at us from every quarter, even if they aren’t real. We avoid the plowing that would interrupt our lives and pull those weeds from our hearts. And we wander further away from the only one who can restore us.
Replanted
At planting time, I get really frustrated when I look at my garden the day after putting tender shoots in the ground to find them lying on their sides and roots sticking out at the end. A four legged marauder has sampled it, found it wanting, and spit out.
I have to replant it.
And hope it grows.
If we allow God to replant us, He will see to the growing.
The chorus from that same song begs our God to take back our hearts and seal them for His Throne above. Yes. Yes. Yes.
One of my friends read from Hosea 6:1-3. This is what a crop from a plowed-up heart looks like:
He heals us
He binds up our wounds
He revives and restores
We live in His presence
We acknowledge Him in all things
We learn of Him
He rises with the sun, in the winter rains and in the spring rains
He waters the earth
He sustains our life
Oh, those blanketty-blank “marauders.” I feel your frustration.
And I feel the deeper truths of the faith humming beneath each line you’ve offered us, true lifelines. Thank you!
And so many congrats on the celebration for the books that have bloomed in you. May the seeds take root and flourish!
Thank you, Laurie. Yep. Meeting those marauders all the time. Sure is lovely to see the blooms coming on now.