When fields lie fallow...

This past week held the annual "Golden Week" vacation--several national holidays in a row that make up a sort of "spring break" here in Japan. When I lived in Niigata, Golden Week was the customary time for rice planting, and the week was marked by flooded fields becoming home for frail-looking green shoots with a special sort of beauty. Once the rice was planted, I would take note of the quickly-changing shoots of green, marking their development and enjoying the obvious productivity and life.

This year is a little different here in Fukushima. At first I couldn't put my finger on the difference--was it cooler weather, or the strong winds from the mountains? Why did it not feel quite like spring yet? Then Cindy commented, "They didn't plant the rice fields."

Of course. Almost every morning I walk or run out by the river near my apartment--right on the riverbank, where there are many fields and orchards...now brown, dusty clay. I guess this year, because of the radiation levels, the government had at first told the farmers here that they could not plant crops...and now they can, but it is too late to prepare the ground. I've also heard whispers like, "We probably couldn't sell anything anyway..."

I was out walking this morning thinking of life and productivity and the future and meaning and all of the questions that I'm constantly asking God in terms of guidance and direction...and my eyes stopped on the dry fields. They look so barren and empty at the moment. And I thought of the farmers asking, "What are we going to do?"...and I thought of my newly-adopted coworkers and students, asking "What are we going to do?"...and I thought of myself, so often asking, "What am I going to do?"...and today it struck me that maybe now is the season of patience and waiting...to stop our human attempts at productivity and let God produce what He will in our dusty, hopeless-looking fields. And that is scary.

When farmers leave fields fallow, it is not because of hopelessness. It is because of a belief in a future of produce and growth.

And this makes me think of redemption--that our barren, empty, meaningless places of futility are filled with Spirit and future and fruit. I believe in redemption. I believe in God's grace and His gift of rest. But my heart joins in the ache of desolate waiting for life, and I hear the whisper, "Not dead, but asleep," and I wonder why something like sleep and rest and the lack of productivity is so frightening. Do we really feel so self-dependent that a year of lying fallow shakes us to the core?