Hosea 10:12
“Sow for yourselves righteousness; reap steadfast love; break up your fallow ground, for it is the time to seek the Lord, that he may come and rain righteousness upon you.”

I recently read an account by Samuel Rutherford. He spoke of going for a walk one evening and passing by a meadow. The way he explained the meadow captured my attention. He said he saw “grass as soft and thick as an immense green Oriental rug”. He spoke of a great tree in one corner of the meadow that was home to “numberless wild birds”. He mentioned two cows laying the shade of the tree “the picture of content”. Dandelions mixed with the wild violets drawing wild patterns of gold and royal purple across the ditch and spreading into the field. He talked of staying there, leaning on the fence for a long time “feasting” his hungry eyes. He remembered thinking to himself that “God never made a fairer spot”. Can you see it? Take a moment and breath it all in, the sight, the sounds, the scent!

The next evening, he passed by to witness disaster! The lush green carpet gone, replaced by overturned earth, the plow still standing there at one end of the field. The gold and purple flowers replaced by a vision of stark brown rows of dirt. He remembers thinking, “Lo! The hand of the despoiler had been there.” (Samuel couldn’t be more wrong in that thought but I’ll get to that in a moment). Gone were the birds, gone were the cows, gone was the buzzing bee and there, in their place was catastrophe. The good times replaced by bad.

What Samuel did not see that day were the days to come. How could he? He only had eyes for what he lost. But later, after a time of much growth in the meadow, came the autumn days. Row upon row of ripe corn ready for the harvest. Samuel wrote of seeing “giant, heavy laden stalks in the autumn sun”. He could now hear the music in the wind as the breezes brushed across the tops. The birds dipped and dived above, and the cows, now in a neighbouring field, would be safe and well fed for the winter. They would now be able to carry on their contentedness for another year.

If you feel like Samuel staring at something that has been tainted by change or seemingly destroyed by the circumstances you’re in, be assured that there is always more going on than what we see. It is comparable to us seeing one piece of the puzzle but God seeing the whole thing. He knows how things can and will fit together BUT we must continue to pursue what is right. We must continue to love God and others. Through that we WILL see God transforming what we thought was yucky or unbearable into something that has unimaginable good things coming from it, including a closer walk with Jesus. Surrender to His process, surrender to Him and watch a stronger, greater, more advantageous beauty flourish in your life.

Streams in the Desert, July 3rd Entry, By: Mrs. Chase C. Cowman, The Oriental Missionary Society, 1940