I confess as a city girl I don’t know much about plowing. I’ve certainly never walked behind a plow – although I did ride the tractor once with my granddad as he dug rows for cotton seed to nestle and grow.

What I remember about that tractor ride was the rich smell of turned-up earth…and how good it felt to sit safely tucked under my grandpa’s chin as we rumbled over the field. Plowing didn’t seem so drastic a measure when it was only the ground that was broken.

It’s a whole lot different when you’re the soil that’s being readied.

The earth doesn’t seem to mind it’s bruising – but I mind mine. “No’s” hurt when you’ve prayed for “yes’s” – and slamming doors can jar the joy right out of your day. Little indignities you’re used to overlooking can super-size before your eyes when what you needed instead was a double dose of kindness. Disappointment is as sharp as the point of any plow – and so are longing and waiting and the quiet wounds that they make.

It’s no fun being broken by the plow. But it’s the tool God often uses to turn me over and ready me for what He means to plant. I’d resist it if I could, but He’s bigger than me – and besides, I can’t see past the row I’m on. He can. And He is a wise husbandman who knows what He’s about.

A.W. Tozer writes, “There are two kind of lives…the fallow and the plowed. The man of fallow life is contented with himself and the fruit he once bore. He does not want to be disturbed. The spirit of adventure is dead within him…he has fenced himself in, and by the same act he has fenced out God…” 

In contrast, he says, “The plowed life is the life that has…thrown down the protecting fences and sent the plow of confession into the soul. Such a life has put away defense and has forsaken the safety of death for the peril of life. Discontent, yearning, contrition, courageous obedience to the will of God – these have bruised and broken the soil ‘til it is ready again for the seed. And as always…fruit follows the plow.”

I don’t always love the plow. But I love the tiller of my soul and the fruit He always brings. And until that harvest season comes, I can breathe in deep and find comfort in the smell of rich and readied earth. Even when its rows are cut in me.

“He has made everything appropriate in its time. He also has set eternity in their heart, yet so that man will not find out the work which God has done from the beginning, even to the end. There is an appointed time for everything…a time to plant, and a time to uproot what is planted…” (Ecclesiastes 3: 11, 1a, 2b, NASB)