Fallow ground

 

Into the night the tractors roared, their lights defeating the darkness. Working as a team, the two farmers skilfully drove their powerful machines as they ploughed, spread muck, injected fertiliser, and planted seed in the field surrounding our house.

Where three days ago there was a bucolic scene of grazing cows and their cavorting calves, today there stretches a brown, apparently empty wasteland. My lone cock pheasant picks his way across the terrain towards our bird feeders. A few days ago, he could have enjoyed some tasty morsels along the way; today all life is gone. The wee field mice have scattered. The worms have taken a deep dive; the insects have nothing there to feed on.

Yet.

But under the apparently arid soil, seed will be stirring into life already. Unseen. Invisible. But real.

Break up your unploughed ground, God told Hosea, for it is time to seek the Lord, until he comes and showers righteousness on you.

Where is the unploughed ground in my life this morning? Has a long season of caretaking hardened me into an unproductive wasteland? Have global events dried up compassion so that seeds of promise cannot take root? Has environmental disaster silenced hope for the future?

Break up your unploughed ground, God tells me. It is time to seek the Lord.

I look at the barren field beyond my window and know that in a few days, green sprouts will spring up, bringing the promise of new life, of nourishment for a wide range of life forms.

Where the soil of my heart has hardened, Lord, help me to break it up. Soften my soul to receive all the divine energy you have for me, so that I might be a beacon of light, life and hope, in the apparent wasteland of the world today. May the Spirit fall soft on this broken-up ground inside me, Lord, teasing out new life in unexpected places. May my life become a place of nourishment and truth, as I wait for you, Lord.

Be blessed today with grace and peace.