I walked the wheat yesterday. Tracks led through and I followed the path, the sun and wind and sky coming too.
The heads are filling out. I felt them. I walked and stalks lined the route, heads leaning over, waving, and I held out my hand and touched them, one after the other, and felt the kernels within, beads swelling with bread of heaven. It fed a place in me. They seemed to know that, each head bending low to brush me as I passed.
The fields are ripening gold in these long summer days and it won’t be long now.
Somewhere out in the midst of her, I stood still. That sun overhead, I grew warm, ripening. And then heavy… bowing low, lowering down to terra, sitting on earth, encircled by wheat. The earth felt firm and solid beneath, sure. Slender stalks exteneded from its dark richness, silk smooth and svelte.
I closed my eyes. And she was quiet. Silent. Millions upon millions of grace stalks, a sea slipping over horizon’s rim, an ocean mirroring sun’s gold, and she lays soundless. I listen but the fields say nothing.
Then the winds pass through. I feel it run through my hair, cool on my face. And each stalk flows with these currents and the sea ripples and this wheat world whispers, a shallow river rushing, gushing, swishing, hushing. Then the wind is gone and wheat words have left too. She’s still, quiet again.
I reached up, felt for a wheat head, arched one down close, and heard her silence. This mother of many swells with bread bounty. But only when the wind passes by does she speak.
I laid down and listened to the wheat yesterday. And later, when I wandered back up to the house, and children pressed, and Little One cried, and two testosterone-surging boys tussled and toppled, I remember what she had told me and I waited.
And let the words only come when the Spirit passed through….
Lord, let the words from these lips today please You, words that only come when You move, Spirit-filled words…
Scripture Food:
“The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it… So is everyone who is born of the Spirit.” John 3:8
“Whoever speaks, is to do so as one who is speaking the utterances of God.” 1 Peter 4:11
Desiring God 2008 National Conference Speaker Interview: Sinclair Ferguson — Acceptable Speech
Photos: our wheat fields in first light
