Sowing through tears

On holiday, I gazed at this field and as I watched wheat dancing in the golden evening sun, I read this:

“Those who sow in tears will reap with songs of joy”

Psalm 126:5

In the early days of grieving Trevor, I struggled to hear this promise. I only realised when I eventually began singing at home again that grief had silenced me for a while. It took time to trust that even our wrenching sorrows will yield to joy so irrepressible that it makes us sing.

It is such a glorious promise for the future that it’s easy to miss what it says about the present - that we are called to sow in the midst of our weeping, whether joy’s melody is in the air or whether we can barely hear its whisper.

We are called to sow. Even when our tears are falling, in fact, especially when our tears are falling, it is time to sow. When tears fall, the ground is softened for planting.

What do we sow? Prayers and kindness and little seeds of good news that fall into the lives around us. Then we watch as God makes the harvest grow and silence gives way to song.

Of course, you won’t bother to sow if you don’t hope for a harvest. Many UK farmers are talking about giving up sowing crops because harvests fail in heatwaves. You need hope to be a sower. But as Paul writes to the Thessalonians, God’s people grieve with hope. So we can weep and sow at the same time.

I wonder as you read this if you are weeping or sowing or harvesting with joy? It seems to me this side of heaven is a mixture of all three. I’ve been singing songs of thanks for the harvest I’ve seen – for lives changed in prison and in churches and for gorgeous grandkids to cuddle - but there are tears too, for children in Ukraine and Gaza and Sudan, for farmers fearing lost harvests, for hurting lives around me and for my failings. Unexpected thorns catch me when I am picking blackberries. Memories pierce our moments of sweetness.

But those who sow in tears will reap with songs of joy.