There are so many mysteries in life. Our understanding of our world is simply imperfect. Because of this, throughout history, men and women of great intellect in all scholarly endeavors – science, mathematics, letters, and philosophy, have ultimately turned to faith to fill in the gaps.
Faith provides us with an inward reservoir of courage, hope, confidence, calmness, and assuring trust that all will come out well – even though to the world it may appear to come out most badly. Yet even our spiritual world can often seem mysterious. All of us at certain times find that understanding God and His ways can be challenging, or paraphrasing St. Augustine, to believe in what we do not see so that we can be rewarded by seeing what we believe is both our struggle and our prize for having faith.
With Easter and Passover week just days away, I’d like to share with you an old Jewish folktale that reminds us of that having faith often entails willingly and enthusiastically walking face-first and full-speed into the dark. But in doing so, we ultimately discover the light of the world.
Once there were two young brothers who had spent all their lives in the city, and had never even seen a field or a pasture. One day they decided to take a trip to the countryside. As they were walking along, they spied a farmer plowing and were puzzled as to what he was doing.
“What strange thing is he doing?” they asked themselves. “This fellow marches back and forth all morning long scarring the earth with long ditches. Why would anyone destroy such a pretty meadow like that?”
Later in the afternoon they passed the same place again and this time saw that the farmer was now sowing grains of wheat into the furrows.
“Now what is he doing?” they asked themselves. “He must be crazy. Now he’s taking perfectly good wheat and tossing it into those ditches he spent all morning digging!”
“The country is no place for me,” said one of the brothers. “The people here make no sense. I’m going home.” And he quickly left his brother and returned to the city.
But the second brother stayed in the country and a few weeks later saw a wonderful change taking place in the farmer’s field. Fresh green shoots began to cover the area with a lushness he had not imagined possible. He quickly wrote to his brother and urged him to return and see this miraculous transformation.
So his brother returned from the city, and he too was amazed at the change. As they weeks passed they saw the green earth turn into a golden field of wheat. And then they comprehended the reason for the farmer’s “strange” work.
As the wheat grew ripe, the farmer came with his scythe and began to cut it down. The brother who had returned from the city viewed this with disbelief. “What is this fool doing now?” he exclaimed. “All summer long he worked so hard to grow this beautiful wheat and now he’s destroying it with his own hands!” He really is crazy after all! I’ve had enough. I’m going back to the city for good now.”
His brother, however, had more patience. He stayed in the country and watched the farmer collect the wheat and take it to his granary. He watched as the farmer cleverly separated the chaff, and how meticulously he stored the rest. And he was filled with awe when he realized that by sowing one bag of seed, the farmer had grown and harvested a whole field of grain. Only then did he truly understand that the farmer had a reason for everything he did.
“And this is how it is with God’s works, too,” he thought, “We mortals see only the beginnings of His plan. We cannot understand the full purpose and end of His creation. So we must have faith in His wisdom.”
Sometimes beautiful things come into our lives out of nowhere. We can’t always understand them, but we have to trust in them. I know you want to question everything, but sometimes it pays to just have a little faith. ― Lauren Kate, Torment
Have an AWE-full Weekend!
William “Bill” Bacque