Farmer's Wisdom

He who drives his spade into the ground but then looks up and is distracted by his neighbours' vast green fields, what benefit can he gain?

As he stares at the beauty of the unattainable, his determination fades away and his strong hands go slack. Resting his hands on the top of the spade, he places his head on it and begins to daydream. He wishes it was his, the beautiful cultivated fields, the rolling hills...he does not even bother to look down at his little square of red dust with weeds sticking out everywhere.

"Why do I work?" he says to himself in bitterness. "It would be better that I did not try. My neighbours' prosperity taunts me. His riches goad and irritate me more than gnats and thorns."

He knew, however, that if he did not sow his seeds, he would die of hunger that winter. So he did so all that planting season: breaking the hard ground, plowing it with a faraway mind, sowing with only one hand (why should he use both, it was pointless to work so hard for an outcome he had lost interest in) and wiping away the tears of injustice which fell to the ground.

When he was exhausted with his labours, he would sit outside in his plot of land and think about the neighbour whose ostentatious display he had to endure everyday. In his dreams, he owned the land next door, and someone else -someone unimportant and nameless- was plowing and cursing the little, barren ground he had.

He began to lose his interest in the little things of life that had once brought him joy. The eternal originality of the morning sun. The flowers opening their buds. The alert eyes of the sparrow, ever-scanning for danger, ready to take flight at the slightest rustle. The pride he had felt at finally earning enough to own land, the grand plans he had for expanding it; all withered into insignificance and mockery when he saw the size of his neighbour's estate.

~


It is harvesttime.

At first, he thinks its another bitter trick life has played on him, that his crop is sickly and frail rather than lush and green.

But one shoot sprouts up, and another, and another...

He does not connect the dots until one morning his sour countenance turns to astonishment and disbelief as his eyes take in the burst of golden rays before him. His plot, his little despised return to labour, was a waving, freeform field of gold.

Little did he know he had been planting wheat, the food of kings and princes, robust enough to feed a man for three days on one meal. He tried to remember where he had gotten the seeds from, but he couldn't remember. The early days of setting up were a blur. Was it from the seller in the market who gave him a special deal, seeing as he was a man of few means? Was it the stranger who had pressed the bag into his hand as a token of gratitude when he had saved him from a ditch? All he knew was that it was from years or decades ago, and that the little bag of seeds were what first inspired him to quit his profession and till the land.

With the sudden realisation of his good fortune, he experienced the agony of regret. Why had he not cultivated the land as he should have? Why did he let his eye and mind wander from task? Why did he...?

He stopped. Had he known he would have received a more bountiful harvest at the end of it, he would have sown more diligently. He would have laboured harder, slept less, envied not, hoped more. He knew that in his actions he deserved almost nothing, and yet he had received so much more than he deserved.

He looked up and thanked the Lord of the rains, the sparrows, the grass and the sky. Few farmers are atheists or nonreligious in one way or another - they know too well that in hard times, faith is the only thing you can cling to. And their beliefs have sustained them through so many rough seasons, growing stronger in each lean time.

He took a last glance at the neighbouring fields, but this time with different eyes. Yes, it was beautiful and perfect. But his harvest was his personal miracle, and he would not change it for the world. His neighbour had attained his lands by grace. And now, even when he sowed with envy, with his bitterness, with laziness and disappointment and failure and frustration - even so, he had received his reward. By grace alone his imperfect sowing was turned into a harvest of beauty and wholeness.

- I tell stories to unearth wisdom that I know is within me, somewhere. Beneath beauty is truth, and shining through all truth is God. That is not a story. -