Devotionals

Fallow Ground

by Cynthia Bowen
08/09/17
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Although I have no horticultural tendencies at all (I mean that I can kill anything green), I did grow up in a rural area where a family’s garden was its main source of vegetables year round.  I remember that when the fresh warmth of spring brought buds to the trees in our yard, our father would start walking the hardened dirt of the garden plot, seed catalog in hand.  When he was convinced  that winter was truly gone and not just playing hide and seek with him, my dad would pull out his trusty garden tiller and spend his evenings pushing the growling machine through the soil.  It left row after row of clods that it had pulled from its bed of dirt filled with broken roots from the weeds that had begun to grow.  I am sure that if the garden could have told the story, it would have been a painful (and maybe even traumatic) beginning  to a summer full of blooming plants and rich harvests.

I have a lot of happy memories from that garden.  I remember running between the cornstalks with my sister  pretending we were in a maze, finding potatoes like buried treasure, and sneaking away with my mother’s salt shaker to eat the tender ripe tomatoes.  But really, none of that would have been possible if not for the tiller breaking up the dirt that had lain dormant during winter.  The ground had to be plowed to become productive.

The reason that I was thinking about that garden was I am reading in the book of Jeremiah right now in my devotion time.  In Jeremiah 4, God calls His people to return to Him, laying aside idolatry and hypocrisy.  He reminds them that their obedience would draw nations to give Him glory.  They have the capacity as a nation to be the garden that produces fruit for God’s uses, but first something has to happen. The hearts of the people that have lain dormant through spiritual complacency and pandering to political approval must be broken up, plowed like the hardened garden plots in the warm spring sun.

“Break up your fallow ground, and sow not among thorns. “(Jer 4:3)  Fallow is a term that describes ground that has been plowed, but then left unused and unseeded for a season of time.  It was prepared for planting, but was left inactive so the ground could rest and receive nutrients to make it more productive.  The thought here in Jeremiah is that the ground has been left fallow, but now it is time to put a plow in, turn over the sun-baked clumps of earth, tear out the thorns that had taken root, and put seed in the ground. 

I hate to admit it, but when I read this verse I felt that pinprick of Holy Spirit conviction in my own heart.  I had not constructed any  idols or taken up some liberal idea of political correctness. Instead I had been settling myself down in front of a television instead of  in my prayer closet. I had been attending church, but I was behaving as a consumer instead of an active participant in the kingdom of God.  I felt a strange hardness to the things of God that had at one time found soft, fertile soil in my heart.

I know better than to allow the things of the world to have my attention, whether it be in entertainment or in worry.  Only God deserves my fascination and my gaze.  It is my desire to please Him above all other things in my life.  I want to be  a person who stirs others to serve the Lord with whole-hearted abandon.  I want to bring Him glory by my obedience and love. At the end of my journey, I want to look into His face and hear Him bid me welcome.  On that day, none of these other things are really going to matter.  

So I choose to listen to Holy Spirit today and break up my fallow ground.  How about you?  Are there areas in your life that have taken up a little too much of your attention?  Are there thorns growing out of a root of worry or a tendency to value comfort and convenience over spiritual depth? If so, let me ask you to pray with me today: 

 Father, I repent for allowing the things of this life to have such a hold on my heart.  I choose to place the plow of prayer into my life to break up my fallow ground. I ask You to remove everything that hinders me from serving you with passion.  Let Your Word do the work of renewing me again.  I pray with the psalmist: Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me. (Psalms 51:10)