The Forgotten Field

 

The forgotten field

 

I took a walk in my dream last night.

It was a lonely brook near a lonely hill, a small overgrown wood lay near the eastern edge and to the west a small forgotten field.

In its glory it was the prized treasure of a farmer and his growing family but now all that remained of those years was a broken down well long emptied of its cool clean water.

I have often wondered where I get that sentimental curiosity, the one that asks the questions that no one seems to ask anymore.   I see a second hand tea cup or handmade apron in a store and wonder of the stories they would tell if they could speak. Of who drank tea by the fire while reading Dickens. Or who filled their homes with the aroma of cookies while their children wiped flour caked hands on the carefully stitched rose at the bottom of the skirt. Whose memories are these that for a moment seem to catch my attention and imaginations?

But this field, was haunting as if the memories had never wandered off. It was different than a mere cup or apron from a store filled with disposable memories. This field was alive. It had a temperature. It had a breath and a brain. It could hear and see, it had a heartbeat. But more to the point it was filled with destiny and purpose, promise and hope.

As I walked, I lightly caressed the tall golden grass that met my fingertips. I saw and heard the grasshoppers playing themselves in a beautiful harmonic way that blended with the winds that gently blew through the leaves of the trees and the grasses as the swayed in rhythm. The brook babbled as its smooth water made its small rocks smoother still with its persistent flow. I knelt low to the ground and picked up dirt that was composted perfectly into gold for a harvest by all the years of waste from the wild plants and animals. This place had a value that had been completely forgotten by any man.

It saddened my heart to think of the old farmer who once valued this field, who once cared for it and fed and watered its soil with his own sweat and toil. What would the farmer say if he could see his field sitting and waiting for someone who would never come to tend this valuable soil? What a waste, what a sad thing to see such a precious treasure go untended, unseen and unutilized.

It’s that moment in a dream that you feel yourself waking up, but you are not quite ready to leave. I held on but the ground beneath me shook, it stopped for a moment. I realized it was the earth waking up, the field was as alive as you or I, breathing in and out. Was it me waking up or was it the field I could not say. But just as soon as I awoke from that world and into this, I wished for just one more moment there. To go back and treasure that field through the eyes of the farmer one more time.

I guess this is the part where I tell you that the field was alive and that it exists not just in dreams. You don’t have to dream to find it although in dreams it seems our fields often find us. For me my forgotten field is not your forgotten field but I would guess that most of us have one somewhere. Few of us make plans to cultivate and harvest and fewer still would recognize it if we saw it.

My forgotten field has five names. It is the husband I promised to care for on our wedding day and the four children I named before they were even in my arms. I see the farmer pointing to places in the field where he wants me to explore, cultivate and harvest, places that this inheritance of ministry that he has given me has in time become like the field with the empty well. It happens even to the best of us that we are given a place where will be so powerful if we can only just remember the value of it and yet we look for other fields to find our purpose.

Have you noticed what time can do to value of things? It either devalues them or makes them more valuable. I have a picture by my front door, when I first put it there it was new and fun to look at and now it is just the wall for as much as I notice it. Have you stared at an image for so long that it loses focus. The monotony of life can cause us to live in a state of un-appreciation and begin to devalue the precious things in life. The forgotten field is usually a place you lived for so long that you couldn’t see its true value anymore. I live by the beautiful Rocky Mountains and yet I have gotten so used to them that I don’t see the beauty anymore but just a background, not un-like a screen saver on a computer. How can we break the pattern of our forgetfulness? How can we see again with fresh eyes? Thankfully all we need to do is go to the farmer that gave us the field in the first place and ask him for fresh eyes.

I believe that our forgetfulness is the reason the bible says that we are to begin anew every morning, and that we are to bring, thanksgiving and praise to Him.

Psalm 136: Give thanks to the Lord for He is good, His love endures forever. Give thanks to the God of Heaven. His love endures forever.  

I had all this seed to sow and I was looking for a field to plant it in. A place to put some roots deep inside and all the while my forgotten field was waiting for me.

Where or who is your forgotten field? Do you know that God has been waiting for you to walk once again in your field of giftedness, in your season of promise? Let Him lead you back and although some weeds may need pulling and some wells re dug for water, there will be a harvest, for you will not toil in vane when you toil for love.