This following piece came from our morning devotions today, the 3rd of July 2020, and seemed so very fitting that we wanted to share it with you.
Does he who ploughs for sowing plough continually?
Isaiah 28:24
One day in early summer I walked past a beautiful meadow. The grass was as soft and thick and fine as an immense Oriental rug. In one corner stood a fine old tree a sanctuary for numberless wild birds; the crisp, sweet air was full of their happy songs. Two cows lay in the shade, the very picture of content.
Down by the roadside the saucy dandelion mingled his gold with the royal purple of the wild violet.
I leaned against the fence for a long time, feasting my hungry eyes, and thinking in my soul that God never made a fairer spot than my lovely meadow.
The next day I passed that way again, and lo! the hand of the despoiler had been there. A ploughman and his great plough, now standing idle in the furrow, had in a day wrought a terrible havoc. Instead of the green grass there was turned up to view the ugly, bare, brown earth; instead of the singing birds there were only a few hens industriously scratching for worms. Gone were the dandelion and the pretty violet. I said in my grief, “How could anyone spoil a thing so fair?”
Then my eyes were opened by some unseen hand, and I saw a vision, a vision of a field of ripe corn ready for harvest. I could see the giant, heavily laden stalks in the autumn sun; I could almost hear the music of the wind as it would sweep across the golden tassels. And before I was aware, the brown earth took on a splendour it had not had the day before.
Oh, that we might always catch the vision of an abundant harvest, when the great Master Ploughman comes, as He often does, and furrows through our very souls, uprooting and turning under that which we though most fair, and leaving for our tortured gaze only the bare and the unbeautiful.
Why should I start at the plough of my Lord, that makes the deep furrows on my soul? I know He is no idle husbandman, He purposeth a crop.
The above devotional reading is for the 3rd of July taken from the book “Streams in the Desert” by L.B. Cowman.
