Appalachian Disciple

I was sitting on an outdoor bench of the Illinois Institute of Technology campus, in downtown Chicago.  My husband was directing a brand new summer project, reaching out to the many Chicago universities.  I was there for six weeks with our 7, 5 and 1 year-olds in tow.  But I didn’t want to be there.  I didn’t want to be anywhere — heaven, maybe?  Done with it all?

I could attribute it to being cooped up in three rooms with my family of five for too long, or feeling trapped in a not-so-great area of town without much opportunity to get out.  Was I tired of being the family on display among 30 college students?  Certainly, but it was more than all that.  It was an anger, on the surface, with a numbness underneath, and a painful sadness deep below.  And I felt like it had been there too long, just too long.  Years, and what was God doing about it?  Nothing that I could see.

I was done.  I had nothing more to say to Him, feeling I had said it all before to no avail.  I went out for a “quiet time” — a pretense for being alone — and an effective way to get time alone because my husband knew I needed a real quiet time so badly.  In disgust, I did what Bible students are instructed not to do — the stuff of pastor’s jokes:  I flipped my Bible open randomly and let my finger drop, daring God to speak.

I have not really tried in the five years since to articulate in writing what God said to me through His Word that day.  The message was so powerful and brought such hope, yet came from such an obscure passage of Scripture, that I have been hesitant to try.  The Spirit made the message clear, and the effect on my heart was dramatic, so I undertake to share it with you.  Perhaps someone needs to hear this word as much as I did.

My finger fell on Isaiah 28: 23-29:

“Listen and hear My voice; pay attention and hear what I say.  When a farmer plows for planting, does he plow continually?  Does he keep on breaking up and harrowing the soil?  When he has leveled the surface, does he not sow caraway and scatter cumin?  Does he not plant wheat in its place and barley in its plot, and spelt in its field?  His God instructs him and teaches him the right way.  Caraway is not threshed with a sledge, nor is a cartwheel rolled over cummin; caraway is beaten out with a rod, and cumin with a stick.  Grain must be ground to make bread; so one does not go on threshing it forever.  Though he drives the wheels of his threshing cart over it, his horses do not grind it.  All this also comes from the Lord Almighty, wonderful in counsel and magnificent in wisdom.”

God instructed me that day on both what the farmer does, and what He was doing with me.  There is plowing (painful, if you are the soil), but the plowing is purposeful and for a time.  There is a leveling of the ground, and then different seed is planted in different ways, in different fields.  Each of these, when grown, will be threshed in the best way for that particular grain, maybe with a sledge, a rod, or a stick.  But all of it is painful (if you are the grain); there is not a gentle way to thresh.  The threshing, however, is purposeful and for a time.  Then the grain must be ground.  Again, painful (if you are the grain), but the grinding is purposeful and for a time.  There is no part of this process in which the farmer doesn’t know what he’s doing, because God has given him insight into these things.  It was God’s design, from the beginning, that to get bread from seed there would be a long process that involves harrowing, threshing, grinding, and a good deal of waiting in between.

Since ancient times, bread has been a staple food in virtually every society.  Jesus teaches us to ask God for “our daily bread.”  Grain, once it takes any of its thousand finished forms in the kitchen, is nourishment and sustenance, but not just that.  It is a source of delight for people the world over; to eat is an anticipated event, and eating more often than not includes a form of bread.  Bread is useful and good, a gift to us from God.

             And this is what God so graciously taught me that day.  He is doing something in me that, in the end, will be both useful and good.  But the process is slow and painful.  “Grain must be ground to make bread,” yes, but “one does not go on threshing it forever.”  Maybe I was just moving from one painful process to the next, but progress was being made.  God may allow the wheels of the threshing cart to be pulled over me, but that is a controlled and deliberate process.  He is not just setting the horses free to grind me into nothing.  The goal is bread.  “The Lord Almighty, wonderful in counsel and magnificent in wisdom,” knows just what He’s doing with me.  He is making bread, a gift to the world.

Somehow just knowing that God had not abandoned me to the trampling of the horses, but was allowing a purposeful pain that would have an end, even if I couldn’t see it then, was a great comfort.  More comforting still was that God would speak to me at all, after my nasty attitude toward Him.  That He would take the time to make me bread; it gave me hope, just as it probably gave to the tribe of Ephraim, who heard this message first. 

I have by no means “arrived,” but I am on the other side of that pain that dogged me so heavily for such a long time.  I say to you, if you are in the middle of it, to “listen and hear [His] voice; pay attention and hear what He says…”  God our farmer does not plow continually; He does not keep on  breaking up the soil; He does not thresh forever.  He does what is necessary to make bread, and He knows just what He’s doing.