The farmer

We stand at the edge of a field washed in soft colours of gold and green. Gentle mountain slopes cage it in, deep blue giants hunkered down and sleeping through the dawn. I can hear sprinklers in the distance, their soft schink-chink-chink a comforting, sleepy kind of sound. There’s a sweet song drifting through the air behind it; the birds are singing the sun awake. The smells are the ones I grew up in, grass and wild flowers and distant rain.

There are times, when he’s standing next to me, that his attention feels like home – like peace – like breath-catching excitement wrapped in safety. And then there are times when doubts, and fear, and my own self criticism, make it so I can’t meet his eyes, can’t feel anything but accusation in his presence. Those are the bad days. It’s almost like I have a bit of dementia when it comes to him. I’m lucid for a while and then I’m lost in the fog, unable to piece together who I am and who he is to me.

He stands beside me, quiet, looking out at the field. His sleeves are rolled up. My heart squeezes tight like it always does when I glimpse him like this, full of silent purpose and calm authority. Earth has already found its way into the cracks and creases of his palms and fingers, and in his scarred, strong hands he’s cradling a handful of seeds. I quickly look away, out at the field, afraid of what he’s going to tell me, of whether he’ll disappear from my mind before we can talk. It’s one of the bad days. The past couple of weeks I haven’t been able to find him, and I’ve just read this verse that brings up all my old religious haunts, the ghosts of self hatred and recrimination taunting me about having a hard heart.

“Who is it that heard and rebelled? Were they not all those Moses led out of Egypt? And with whom was he angry for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies perished in the wilderness? And to whom did God swear that they would never enter his rest if not those who disobeyed? So we see that they were unable to enter because of their unbelief.”

Hebrews 3:16-19

There’s been lots of talk in my world about hard hearts in the past couple of weeks. Lots of diagnoses and fingers pointing at others. Why does it make us feel powerful to look at someone else and proclaim they have a hard heart? It’s like we think if we can see it elsewhere it means we’ve escaped it ourselves. And the last thing I wanted to read this morning was a verse speaking of God’s anger, of his refusal to let people into his rest. The way I read it paints him the villain and me the unworthy. I can’t hear past the legalism whispering in my ear. I can’t remember that Jesus never forbids people from coming to him.

“Are you telling me I have a hard heart?” The words tumble past my lips before I can stop them. And the sound of them, the exposure of the fear that’s been growing inside me brings a cascade of wild, rebellious tears to my eyes. Hard hearts are the ones he can’t be in. Hard hearts are the ones that can never find rest. They don’t get to be with him. My childhood tells me they’re the ones you throw away. Maybe if we thought about what we are saying we’d think twice before diagnosing a hard heart.

He doesn’t answer me. Instead he strides forward into the wheat stalks that stand as tall as his shoulders, and I follow him, right on his footsteps. My heart is pounding, and I’m fighting back tears, waiting for him to explain it to me, take away the fear that I might be separated from him forever because I haven’t tried hard enough to be good. To listen and obey like Sunday school taught me. The childish idea that the only fix for a heart that’s hard is a spank or a verbal tongue lashing is in the back of my mind, and I’m just waiting for that first punch – once it’s over I’ll be able to accept it and relax. I don’t realize yet that I’ve already gotten started without him.

I notice as I follow him that some of the seeds are spilling out of his hand. The golden sprinkles land on the path we walk; they land on the patches of ground where wheat isn’t growing because weeds cover it; they land amongst some rocky spots and disappear between the solid, grey, lumps. Distress fills me as I watch. I know what he’s showing me. Those seeds are gold. I know they come from who he is. They’re little bits of him, meant to fill me up, meant to be a treasure that transforms me into who I’m meant to be. He’s letting them slip out of his hands willy nilly, sharing them with all the ground like he always does because he’s extravagant that way. And they’re being wasted. I know from the old stories that those weeds will choke them out; those rocks will keep them from rooting; that path is too hard (just like my heart) and they’ll just bounce off. When the sun comes up it’ll burn them away as if they never landed there in the first place. And as I cast glances backwards over my shoulder I see little birds come swooping down, gobbling the tiny bits of gold I can see.

I turn around then, and follow him, my shoulders slumped, tears rolling down my cheeks. He’s still walking deeper into the field, humming some song beneath his breath as the sun peeks out above the hills. I’m not really paying attention to him, I’m too fixated on my hard heart. Don’t know how to fix it. It’s exhausting when I look at all the patches amongst the wheat where weeds flourish, and the rocks that shouldn’t be there, the path that seems too wide and bare, packed down beneath too many feet trodding back and forth. I don’t think I’m big enough to be on guard against all of the things at once. Which of these is my heart? Is it full of rocks? Is it full of weeds? Or is it all bare and hard and smooth like the path.

I feel like the girl in the little tin tub – the one we used to pretend was a boat and ride down our creek. It was riddled with holes and water would start flooding in after just a minute from the start. My sister and I would frantically scoop handfuls up and toss them out hoping it would stay afloat long enough to get to the pond. Sometimes we tried patching the holes with gum or tape or stuffed them full of grass and sticks, hoping to slow the flood. It never worked.

Suddenly Jesus comes to a stop and I run straight into his back because my head’s been down while my thoughts run in circles over which kind of hard my heart is and I’m berating myself for letting it get to this state. I don’t even know where the hard is, so how can I fix it?

He chuckles and reaches one arm out to steady me, drawing me in to his side. “Here we are.” He says.

In front of us is a wide square of freshly tilled ground. It’s dark, so, so dark with nutrients, and I can practically feel the cool silk of it in my hands. Heavy and thick like it should be. I watch him, dumbfounded because I didn’t know this patch was here – I couldn’t see it from the edge of the field. He walks forward, and carefully, methodically, starts planting seeds, spilling them into the ground where they are swallowed up and embraced by the earth. And that’s when I realize the pile of seeds in his hands hasn’t diminished from spilling out on our way here. He’s holding just as many as he started with. Because there is no limit to him. He doesn’t ever get to the end of sharing who he is.

“Which part am I?” I whisper hoarsely. Wishing I was that square of earth – so eager for what he gives, so lucky to have his attention, his care. Knowing it can’t be me. Not after I heard that verse.

He’s finished planting, and he stands, brushing his palms off against the sides of his jeans. He looks at me,

“Haven’t you figured it out yet, Ker?”

The field sits around him, all different pieces of it. I notice that the path we’ve walked on ends at the square. All that hard earth has been broken up and tilled. That’s why his hands were already so dirty this morning. Rocks have been pulled from it and set aside, no weeds are in sight. All the seeds he’s planted are safely tucked away from the birds and the sun until they’re ready.

I can’t answer him, even though hope keeps trying to poke its head up inside my thoughts. I need him to tell me. There’s been too much talk lately, about right and wrong and people who should get what’s coming to them, people who God’s for and who’s he’s against.

“It’s all you, Ker.” He says, his eyes twinkling at me. “Yes you carry hard parts where you can’t let me in yet. Yes you have spots where worry and fear choke away my truth and my love. Yes there’s rocky spots where there’s not enough soil to grow, where you can’t see who you’re meant to be.”

He holds up his hands to me, letting me see the scars and the dirt. “That’s what these are for.”

I stare at him, at the love in his eyes, and I can see him now, the dementia of fear and doubt is cleared away. And not only that, but he shows me this patch of tilled earth, and he opens my eyes to what part of my heart it is – a relationship I closed off years and years ago and left in the dust of my anger and judgement. I suddenly know what he’s tilled up and gotten ready for his seeds. It’s not anything I expected. It’s not the part of my heart I even tried to get ready for him. There was hatred where that square rests. There was probably one of the hardest pieces of my heart and I wasn’t trying very hard at all to tend to it. There was a lot of judgement weeds growing there – that’s what hard hearts do – judge. See the worst in whatever or whoever they’re closing themselves to. Unable to see Jesus redeeming, Jesus kneeling, thrusting his hands in the soil. Jesus carefully tending the rocks and the weeds. Waiting for the right season. The right moment to speak when we can hear. When we’re ready to turn around and open up.

Relief geysers up inside me like a rushing spring. Joy floods my heart with gratitude, with awe, with the faith in him I was desperately trying to find – the rest I thought I’d never feel again. I burrow my face inside his shirt as he wraps his arms around me and I laugh at myself.

Unlike what my child heart understood, He does not ever categorize me as only one thing (Except maybe as his beloved). He does not look at me and see a hard heart – but rather a field full of all different types of soil that need tending. In my childish learning it was always extremes – you could only be one thing at a time. You were good or you were bad. You were hard or you were soft. You obeyed or you rebelled.

It’s so much easier that way – in the extremes and absolutes. In protecting the rules and standing on the principles. But I’ve learned that it’s also narrowing. It puts blinders on my vision, keeps me from looking at where he’s working, what he’s accomplishing, who he’s loving and being patient with. Thank goodness that he’s a farmer. That he expects rocks and bad weather and all kinds of seasons. And thank goodness my heart is the field he wants to work in. Thank goodness I don’t have to tend to it by myself.