Keep Planting

He who goes out weeping as he carries his sack of seed will come home with cries of joy as he carries his sheaves of grain.
—Psalm 126:6

The Hebrew word for carried is the same for both times. But the weight is entirely different.

He goes out carrying seed — small, buried potential, nothing yet. He comes back carrying sheaves — the multiplied harvest. The verb holds the journey together. Same man, same arms, same word. But everything between the two moments has changed.

At seed-time, he is weeping in despair. An exile in a foreign land. No hope for the future. Carrying seed, not because he is focused on the coming harvest, but because it is what he does — who he is. He is going through the motions, halfheartedly, because it is time to scatter seed. He may even blindly scatter some seed. But much of the seed simply spills out of his bag as he walks to and fro, weeping over his plight.

He's broken, distracted. Simply doing what he knows.

And the seed is mixed with his tears as he wanders through his day.

I got a taste of this despair I jail. I couldn’t see a future. All I could see were bars. Locks. Correctional officers. Other “exiles.”

I did what I knew. I read my Bible. I read books about the Bible and Christian discipleship. I prayed. I spoke about my awakening faith among the other exiles with every breath. And I wept. In despair, sadness, hopelessness. Not even aware that I was, in fact, sowing in tears.

But God is faithful, even in exile. The planter expected little of his seed scattering, because he remembered his emotional state during the scattering.

He wasn’t even trying his hardest. But God honored the scattered seed anyway — not because the planting was excellent, but because God is faithful to the one who showed up at all.

Then the planter cries with joy as he observes the increase God provided and carries his gathered sheaves.

The word for "carries" doesn't imply careful, intentional planting. It's bearing, hauling. A man weighted down. The seed going out with him is almost incidental to his grief.

But seed that spills from a weeping man's bag still grows.

The yield comes not from the precision of the sower but from what the ground and God can do with what lands.

In jail, I showed up. In a jail cell, with whatever was available to me, half a bag of seed and a broken man carrying it. But I came home with sheaves.

I am a new man. With a new vision. And a future. An unknown future, for sure. But I know Who holds it. And I trust Him.