Full of...

He’s already at the back door. He turns, hand on the knob and I can see how he’s aged in a day, worn by the dirt and the wind and the sacrifice, his eyes shot red through.

“Wagon’s right full of seeds.”

Full of dreams, full of possibility, full of what can only be – only if we let it go.

In this hard world, there is disappointment and there is death and there is dark and is it all only hard when we’re fooled into thinking this world is the only world we’ll ever get?

That is the paradox: this wondrous mess, this is it, right now, and there’s no waiting for another elusive life of perfection here, so we’ll laugh praise now, knowing that the real, righter, forever life is still coming, if we walk gratefully through our Christ doors of now.

from "When you're burying all your hopes and dreams," A Holy Experience, 05.11.11, by Ann Voskamp

I marked this beautiful post by Ann Voskamp a couple of weeks back, because it is about farming but it is about Christ. Reading it, I couldn't help but think of my favorite farmers in the entire world, starting to seed their crops at the exact same time.

Farming is such hard and uncertain work. Each step of the way is taken in faith, so many factors completely out of their control.  The weather can't be too hot or too wet. They face the uncertainty of the plagues each growing season, of storms or pestilence or disease.
 
If the seeds sprout...
If the plants grow...
If the crop is harvested...
If the market is good...

It all starts with burying the seed in the ground.
The dead is brought back to life.
Full of dreams, full of possibility, full of what can only be – only if we let it go.
And isn't that where a walk of faith always begins?

(photo credit: taken in Iowa, not far from my friends' farm, on a beautiful Sunday afternoon in May.)