Sowing in Tears
A Reflection for Lent
“Those who sow in tears shall reap with shouts of joy.”
- Psalm 126:5
If you have tried to follow in the way of Jesus for any length of time, you have likely been in need of encouragement. Self-giving love is often “shed from scarred hearts, like rain from a sloped tin roof.” It doesn’t always produce the fruit we hoped it would. Weariness is as familiar to the heart as hunger is to the stomach. We’ve all been in need of encouragement, to keep going.
Most of us have experienced that encouragement through the well-intentioned quote from Galatians 6:9, “Don’t grow weary in well-doing.” After all, the harvest is right around the corner.
Okay, it’s around the next corner.
Alright, it’s the corner after that, I promise…
Maybe the next one?
Weariness usually wells up within us when our hearts give in to the belief that the harvest is most certainly, not around the next corner. If weariness is the [unwelcome] companion of the human heart, then we must learn to practice a form of encouragement that reaches the depths of our heart’s need. And most pithy statements and quick quotes just don’t reach us deeply enough.
That’s where the Psalms come in.
Sowing and harvesting are common motifs that thread throughout the scriptures. And for good reason, too. In an agrarian culture, it resonated deeply with its audience (And let’s be honest, you don’t have to be a farmer to identify with it, even today). The fruit of one’s labor is a common saying in western culture. But built into the saying is this principle: You will reap what you sow. Principles are black and white. They aren’t very flexible. The wisdom literature of the scriptures is full of them. And they are true. Most of the time.
Faithfulness leads to blessing.
Fear of God leads to wisdom.
Godliness leads to joy.
Generosity leads to freedom.
Yes and amen.
And also, sometimes, life swallows up your wisdom with unforeseen circumstances and snatches away your blessings through greed and oppression, and sometimes devastating grief turns our joy into a flimsy life raft collapsing under the crushing waves of the sea.
Sometimes you do what you’re supposed to do and you receive the fruit of a curse, instead of a blessing.
Sometimes you put your faith in Jesus and step out into the unknown, only to get bit by a rattlesnake.
Sometimes you sow and you don’t reap a harvest.
That’s the nature of the curse.
“By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” The sweat of one’s face is not primarily meant to evoke the image of hard work– it’s meant to evoke the feeling of fear. The fear that you may till the hard soil, and plant your crop, and the rains may not come, and it might all have been in vain.
The curse of our work is tethered both to the challenge and the insecurity of our work. Our resources are scarce, and oftentimes we spend them– we invest them– and they don’t pay off.
How sweet, then, are the words of the Psalmist who says, “Those who sow in tears shall reap with shouts of joy. He who goes out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing shall come home with shouts of joy, bring his sheaves with him.”
Imagine going out to work your fields, with tears in your eyes. What would cause such strange behavior? Allergies?
Imagine kneeling down in the hard, dry, dirt…and putting your hand in your pocket and running your fingers through the few seeds your family has left. Last season was a drought and the pantry is getting thin. And so are your children. The skies are clear. The air is dry. All that’s left to do is weep.
And sow those seeds you have in your hand.
Blessed are those who with tear-stained-cheeks choose to sow anyway. Blessed are those, who when they don’t know if and when the harvest is coming, they choose to invest anyway. Blessed are those who stop looking for real-estate in other countries as an escape, and choose to invest where God has planted them. Blessed are those who have no idea how technology and AI will impact the world their children will inherit and they choose to parent with courage and hope, anyway. Blessed are those who have heard time and time again that the poor will always be among them, and they choose to fight for a world where poverty has been overcome by flourishing.
Blessed are those who feel both the seeds of God’s promises in their pockets, and the tears that run down their cheeks, and courageously choose to deny neither– sowing the seeds of promise while they weep.
You can be honest with your weariness without giving in to it. A pithy statement will not get you there. Learning to go inward and make peace with your emotions is where the journey begins (although, it doesn’t end there). There is a promise that remains true, no matter how we feel. We must learn to hold both our feelings and this great hope together, sowing truth, with tears in our eyes.
The Kingdom is already and not yet.
I will likely return to the dust before I see it in all of its glory.
I’m choosing to sow hope anyway.
Will you join me?