It has been a long time since I have posted to my blog, and if you will bear with my musing, I need the catharsis and platform for processing my thoughts that this affords me.
Psalm 126:5 says “Those who sow in tears will reap with songs of joy.”
These are words that the Lord brought to my heart as Juergen and I were praying over the hurting heart of our youngest daughter. In my anger, I was unable to grab on to those words last night, but this morning they were there again, insistent, when I woke up. Somehow I got the feeling that there was more than the obvious that the Lord wanted me to understand from the verse.
After wrestling in prayer for about an hour, I finally got up and googled the words so I could find the reference. As I meditated on it, I began to think about how many verses of scripture talk about sowing and reaping, and about seeds. In addition to many Old Testament references, there are several to be found in the New Testament. Jesus talked about sowing and reaping: there is the parable of the sower and the seed, with emphasis placed upon the type of soil in which the seed is deposited. Paul gives a warning that we will reap what we sow, but what can we know about the seed?
Jesus said, “I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.”
Do seeds die? Anyone who has planted seeds knows that they don’t all germinate, so in that sense, some do. But what about viable seeds? It seems as if Jesus is saying that when a seed is planted, it dies. Or is He? I’m thinking of what I have discussed with my 7th grade science students about seeds. Seeds certainly appear to be dead things, yet if you cut one open, you can discover the starch inside which is evidence of stored food. Why would food be stored in a dried out seed? To support the embryonic life within. Only when the hard exterior seed coat is softened with water can the seedling burst forth and the plant grow, producing fruit with many more seeds, to begin the cycle again.
Thus when we sow, we are sowing something that looks like death, but in reality bears new life within. This image of life hidden within something apparently dead was confirmed for me today as Christina and I talked at lunch. I was sharing my thought process of this morning and telling Christina that I was planning on blogging what I thought the Lord was telling me in hopes of understanding it better. She found it interesting, because she had awakened this morning with a song from the musical, The Secret Garden, going through her head. In the musical, Mary finds a garden that has been long neglected, and thinks it is all dead. In the musical, the garden is representative of the lost love of Mary's uncle.
The gardener, Dickon, tells her that although the garden appears dead, he can tell there is life within. The song is called “Wick”. He explains to Mary what “wick” is:
DICKON:
When a thing is wick, it has a life about it.
Now, maybe not a life like you and me.
But somewhere there's a single streak of green inside it.
Come, and let me show you what I mean.
When a thing is wick, it has a light around it.
Maybe not a light that you can see.
But hiding down below a spark's asleep inside it,
Waiting for the right time to be seen.
You clear away the dead parts,
So the tender buds can form,
Loosen up the earth and
Let the roots get warm,
Let the roots get warm.
Come a mild day, come a warm rain,
Come a snowdrop, a-comin' up!
Come a lily, come a lilac!
Come to call,
Callin' all the rest to come and see!
MARY:
When a thing is wick,
And someone cares about it,
And comes to work each day, like you and me,
Will it grow?
DICKON:
It will!
MARY:
Then have no doubt about it,
We'll have the grandest garden ever seen!!
[Spoken]
Oh, Dickon, I want it all to be wick! Would you
come and look at it with me?
DICKON:
I'll come every day, rain or shine if you want me.
All that garden needs is for us to come wake it up!
MARY:
But, Dickon, what if we save the garden, then Uncle
Archie takes it back, or Colin wants it?
DICKON:
Ay, what a miracle that would be, gettin' a poor
crippled boy out to see his mother's garden!
[Sung]
MARY and DICKON:
You give a living thing
A little chance to grow,
That's how you will know
If she is wick, she'll grow.
So grow to greet the morning,
Leave the ground below.
When a thing is wick
It has a will to grow and grow.
MARY:
Come a mild day, come a warm rain,
Come a snowdrop, a-comin' up!
Come a lily, come a lilac!
Come to call, calling all the rest to come!
MARY and DICKON:
Calling all the rest to come!
Calling all the world to come!
DICKON:
Oh, somewhere there's single streak of green below,
MARY and DICKON:
And all through the darkest nighttime,
It's waiting for the right time.
When a thing is wick, it will grow!
Christina didn’t think anything this morning about that song going through her head until I started sharing with her that I thought the Lord was speaking to me of a seed appearing to be dead, yet bearing life, and then she told me about the song. It seemed awfully much like the same message.
There are several ways to interpret this, and I don’t trust myself to have clear perspective, but because I know my Lord, and his faithfulness, I choose to take encouragement from this. We certainly have been sowing with tears, and grieving over what could have been. The seed is a promise of Christina's future love. It feels like a death, and from appearance, looks to be dead, but maybe there is life within, somewhere. I pray that we will someday indeed reap from this experience with songs of joy. If you have ever heard the song “Wick”, it is definitely a joyful song, full of hope, and while it may not be from scripture, God is Lord of all, even of a musical that holds a place in my dear daughter’s heart, a heart that once was, and now is again a Secret Garden, awaiting a mild day and a warm rain in which to grow.
By the way, the picture at the top of this is of one of my favorite heirloom plants, Love in a Puff. When the puff is mature, it will contain 3 little seeds with hearts on them.
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