Sowing New Seeds
Van Gogh, The Sower, 1888
Well, this morning we wake up to a new year. I’ve always loved this time of year, pulling out last year’s goals and writing new ones. I suspect I may be the optimistic type. Not always, but I try to focus on possibilities rather than the seductions of limitations. I try not to focus on what has been, as if my disappointments lock me into what must always be. We’ve been through a lot over the last year. I sense it’s time to turn the page. That’s where I begin this morning.
Here’s what I’m thinking. We may be at a tipping point where we can’t go any deeper into gloom or despair or hopelessness. I sense we can’t get any further into hysteria about destruction and demise. I don’t think we can wander any further from simple common sense. Having focused so intensely on what matters to me, and only me, we have lost our sense of common good and the ability to love those around us. We can’t seem to pay attention to the little things or be rapt by beauty. We seem to have lost our capacity for joy.
Something is shifting for me. Through this season of advent reading and reflection, I have been struck, very deeply in fact, that a baby in the shed out back shook the world to its roots. The whole notion of what is possible was shattered. New promise broke out all over the place. The skies began to sing. New light shone in the darkness. New joy was possible for a joyless planet and burdened hearts.
When the star of the magi stopped over this baby’s manger, the wisemen “were over-whelmed with joy.” This was a moment when everything changed! Things shifted from gloom to joy. And I’m thinking, on this new year’s morning, it can happen again.
In the midst of my advent reflection, I re-discovered that amazing Psalm 126. To be sure this vision of life acknowledges tears of sorrow. And yet, even through fears and anxieties, even anticipating setbacks and losses, even as gloom settles over the future, in the end, we go on sowing seeds in anticipation of harvest. That’s what I want to launch this morning: Sowing new seeds in anticipation of gathering in the sheeves.
WHEN the LORD restored the fortunes of Zion,
we were like people renewed in health.
Our mouths were full of laughter
and our tongues sang aloud for joy.
Then among the nations it was said,
‘The LORD has done great things for them.’
Great things indeed the LORD did for us,
and we rejoiced.Restore our fortunes, LORD,
as streams return in the Negeb.
Those who sow in tears
will reap with songs of joy.
He who goes out weeping,
carrying his bag of seed,
will come back with songs of joy,
carrying home his sheaves. Psalms 126
Despite the heaviness of our lives and our world, God is still in the business of restoring our fortunes, renewing our health, giving us mouths full of laughter, tongues of joy. God did this at dire moments throughout history. He did it in the manger under the vengeful eyes of Roman power and the resentful gaze of religious leaders. He can do it again.
I’ve always loved Van Gogh’s The Sower, painted in 1888, two years before he tragically took his own life. In this late painting, among so many in the last years of his life, we find the sower planting seeds. There must be a future! As the seeds scatter out across the ground, the crows gather up a few of them, and yet this painting is full of joyous expectation. Seeds will sprout. Harvest will come. Joy is on its way.
We’ve been through so much. We are afraid even to think about planting more seeds. Harvest seems a long ways off, if ever possible again. And yet I come through my advent reflections with such deep longing for new light to shine in the gloom. I find myself patiently waiting, hoping, expecting, watching, listening. And then Jesus changes everything. I come away believing, he is ready to do it again.
It may be time to stop whining about the crows stealing a few seeds. It’s time to imagine bringing home the sheaves. It’s time to sing new songs of joy. The Lord restored the fortunes of his people many times before. It’s time to be renewed, once again, to health and laughter and joy.