That Time of Year

We have had good weather for getting into the fields and the sound of tractors come from all directions. This is a really good time of year….new expectations, new hopes for the coming season, renewal and sunshine, mixed with a bit of rain, make for a lot of hope for the future.

I probably love this time of year, because it is a time of new beginnings. That seems kind of an odd thing to say when the same stuff gets done year after year. Fields get prepared, seed gets purchased and equipment is whipped into shape for the planting season. Things we do every spring. And yet, it is new beginnings; as it is new seed, a new year of planting and the smell of fresh earth that never grows old.

My farmer husband is pretty old school compared to most in our area. He uses old tractors, an old planter (by today’s standards) and if his rows are straight it is totally his driving skills and not due to GPS technology. Personally, I think he kind of enjoys the thought that it is him and the field and not the field and a computer screen.

In our area we were blessed with some rain. We did not get as much as some miles away, but any amount is totally appreciated and raises expectations for a good year. That might just be the thing that keeps a farmer going…..the hopes and expectations that life will work out, no matter what it looks like right now.

I have learned a lot from farmers….I have learned that you do not give up, I have learned that, while you have no control over so many things in farming, you still prepare and put that seed in the ground and then you stand back and watch what will be.

So much of life is like that…you have no control over so many situations….but you still prepare…you still hope…there is still the expectations and the wonder of standing back and seeing what God will do with whatever is happening right now. The good, the bad, the uncertainty, the things that do not work out and the things that do….all remind me that God has it in hand..and I do not. There is a huge comfort in that thought for me.

May this week find you planning, hoping, expecting and knowing with great assurance that the plan is being worked out (even if we cannot see it) and life is good and living is not just surviving. Plant those seeds and see what God will do.

“Don’t judge each day
by the harvest you reap,
but by the seeds that you plant.”
— Robert Louis Stevenson