The eastern light breaks across a morning horizon.  Shafts of yellow sunshine catch the upper branches of the elms and maples rich in their early summer foliage as the damp aroma of fertile loam rises to meet the dawn.  You can smell it - the earth. 

Birds are the only creatures really busy in that first hour after twilight, their cry and chirp part of nature's daybreak song.  Bugs are snuggled inside the cool earth bursting with its nutrients below a soft-tilled surface. 

Here or there a porch swing idly sways in the shadows.  Gentle puffs of fresh clean air stir young leaves on the stalks of corn, and even the unpracticed eye can't help but follow the dark line of perfect corn rows which disappear in a kind of optical illusion especially if you take a few steps across the green lawn.  It almost seems as though fields are in motion like spokes of a boy's bicycle. 

Across the road you squint to see the young beets or maybe a neighbor's clothesline sporting a forgotten pair of overalls.  The day is awakening, and a ruby sun bears the promise of a day in which crops will bask through sunlit hours, not needing to turn because the sun itself will march the sky and give each side of every plant the attention that it needs. 

Painted pickets by a flower garden show delicate rivulets of dew, and the sound of footfalls on a gravel yard die away as the farmer makes his way toward outbuildings which themselves have a center of gravity so substantial they seem ready to outlive any storm or season.  Inside, everything from twine to tractors await the assignments he will give them.  The feel is so familiar, anchored to the land, tranquil and garden-fresh as morning breaks.

God is the Giver of it all. 

No one knows the constancy of the Creator better than a farmer.  The planting, growing, harvest, and fallow seasons are as God commands.  The farmer's time-piece is the interlocking rhythm of rains and sun, of frost and thaw, all of which God sends.  And his fruitfulness is all God's doing, not his own.  The very seed is a tithe from the Lord's goodness from a previous year's bounty.  God furnished: that is what is true of the seed, sprout, stem, and bloom.  The strength to make it grow rests only in our Maker's power.

The farmer's life is especially blessed, not just because he can stretch his arms wide and watch daily the miracle of growing things; not just because nature is right by his back door with all its wonders; but the farmer's life is blessed because he's at the mercy of God. 

Yes, few men are as autonomous as farmers.  Theirs is never shift-work, but a way of life.  Colleagues are not a corps of supervisors, assistants, managers and agency staff-but of neighbors down the lane and trusted friends.  Farming has the form of freedom. 

And yet, the farmer is more needy and more unsure than men in almost any other walk of life because you cannot contract for summer rains.  You cannot pay hail to stay away or make demands upon a stubborn draught.  A year's hard work can be lost by one untimely blight or infestation, and even the bumper year may be so great to force down prices, so the farmer is humbled again.

But to be at God's mercy is the only way to truly live. 

To be subject to the will and wisdom of Almighty God beyond our own perception and understanding is to live by faith.  To trust not only one's livelihood but one's whole life to the benevolence of a gracious God in Jesus Christ is the appeal of the Gospel which reveals the true countenance of God in the face of His Son. 

It was in mercy that Christ came to earth.  He knew man's affinity is with the earth.  After all, man and earth are made of the same clay.  To till the soil is to be in our own element, and on a summer day when nature's force is conspicuous and a man, perspiring, looks with satisfaction on the land he has worked and fought to make increase, the summons "Be thou faithful" may seem faint and contrary against the hard work and application of oneself, of one's own brawn and brains that earned the pleasure of fruitful fields.  In the summertime of life, how many men count their wealth in acreages or their own faculties?  Many do. 

But not the man of God.

"Be thou faithful" means that the object of his confidence is not markets or his own intuitions shaped and sharpened by years.  The object of Christian faith is not one's own proficiency or production.  The Christian holds rather to the mercy of God in Christ.  The proof of God's love is not foremost in earth's abundance but in heaven's. 

The temperament of God is not read by a rain gage or a commodity quote.  The disposition of God is shown by the cross of Christ and the pronouncement of absolution in Jesus' Name. 

The everlasting Word of God justifies Christian faith.  God is believable.  His Gospel is credible because it declares the Christ of God, the incarnate Savior of the world, the God who became dust himself, who entered His own creation to restore to us sinners that Garden once lost, to turn by His own death and resurrection tears and thorns to laughter and granaries filled with His gifts 

The Lord who says, "Be thou faithful" put Himself at risk, His own holy Name, His own reputation, and even His own life to validate such a command to be faithful.  For what sort of god invites our trust only to let us down? 

Not the God of the cross and crown!  Not the God of Israel who carried His people to a land flowing with milk and honey, "a land of brooks of water, of fountains and springs, flowing out in the valleys and hills, a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and honey, a land in which you will eat bread without scarcity ... and you shall eat and be full, and you shall bless the Lord your God for the good land he has given you." (Deut. 8)  

Does such a God disappoint?  Not the God of Bethlehem and Galilee.  Not the God who gave His own beloved Son, who witnessed his own Son crucified so we could know the truth and depth of God's fidelity.

"Be thou faithful" describes the Lord of the church who wrapped us in his grace at our baptism, who nourishes us by His Word of life now, and feeds us yet the very living body and blood of our Savior when Autumn comes. 

The green turns to golden.  The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the Word of the Lord endures forever.  All is safely gathered in, ere the winter storms begin.  Ribbons of frost now parallel the shadows, and clouds show a chill in the grey, cobalt skies.  "Be thou faithful" is still God's summons, even as the strength, both of land and farmer fades.  The crops are sold off, and eventually the homestead too.  Once prized assets are auctioned perhaps or scattered to the wind.

And what remains?  When even heaven and earth shall pass away, what remains?  What continues during the fallow time when trees are barren and barns are silent?  What lasts once dust returns to dust and the name on a mailbox fades from memory, and wintry quiet settles in where mousers once scampered and a boy first put his hand to a plow but is no more?

What remains?  This! - God's unfailing promise through His Son to the faithful.  "I will give you the crown of life."  The promise rests in Christ alone.  Resurrection to life follows death for those who are in Christ. 

"I will give you," is Christ Jesus' promise.  It will not be by one's own exertion because a man can no more raise himself to life than he can make even the simplest seed to grow.  God can do what man cannot.  God can and will do what we can neither accomplish nor comprehend except by faith.

What is impossible to man is possible with God.  Jesus Himself is the Seed, the seed of the woman by which God gave His promise of new life even in the Garden of Eden when the land was cursed and He said, "By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; and to dust you will return."  That Living Seed was sowed in the womb of the Virgin Mary.

As Isaiah prophesied, "There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit.  And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him."  The new harvest, the eternal harvest was contained in that one Seed, and even now the reapers are gathering in those born of Him.

Winter will turn to spring.  The resurrection has begun.  Christ burst his three-day prison the crown of life to give.  Easter is our springtime.  Christ Jesus is alive, and He lives in the baptized.  The Christian will rise again more surely than any crop ever planted, because this life was watered by baptism, dressed in Christ's righteousness, nourished by the humas of Christ's own body and blood, and warmed by the smiling countenance of a Father who declared his people forgiven and free.

Springtime has come

The eastern light breaks across a morning horizon.  Shafts of yellow sunshine catch the upper branches of the Tree of Life.  The aroma of the fertile loam of the new heaven and the new earth meets the eternal dawn.  Angels sing the daybreak song.  Here or there a porch swing idly sways in the home of peace and concord.  Every eye is drawn to the throne where the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world welcomes home His redeemed.  It is no optical illusion.  The day has awakened.  The Son of Righteousness has risen with healing in his wings.  And through the sunlit hours, days, and years into eternity, each of us in Christ will be given everything we need.

The sound of footfalls on the yard will be those of Jesus making his way to us so we can walk the fields together, the Lord and His loved one, inseparable and at peace as morning breaks.