Seeds of Faith

This psalm has meant a great deal to me. This is a psalm about faith, about hanging on into God when everything seems disaster all around.

I remember a time in my life when everything seemed to have collapsed around me and I felt that I had hit rock bottom. I had no idea how I could get out of this place. Church, family, friends, marriage, even my work, had been touched, and were in turmoil. And here I was at the end of everything – or was it?

At that point, I remember standing in my kitchen, all alone. And I remember making a declaration to God, there in my kitchen at home, in an empty house. I stamped my feet and stretched my arms towards the ceiling and declared into the silence something like ‘Satan!  You’re destroying my marriage, destroying my family, destroying my ministry, destroying me!  I’m not having it anymore! Get out! God, I’m trusting you to get me out of this hole!’

And then I came upon this psalm. It ends like this: ‘Those who sow in tears will reap with songs of joy. He who goes out weeping carrying seed to sow, will return with songs of joy,
carrying sheaves with him’ (Psalm 126:5-6).

And then I understood what this was saying. You can go out weeping (and maybe it seems that this is the end) – but if you go out weeping and are carrying seed to sow, that seed you are sowing is faith. The only reason why you would save some of this year’s harvest to sow for next year’s crop is that you have faith!

That day in my kitchen was a turning point for me. God saw my little seed of faith. And He honoured it, just as He had honoured those Jews who went into exile but hung on in faith that God would bring them out again, back to Jerusalem, with joy.