Righteous Rain

Sew for yourselves righteousness; reap steadfast love; break up your fallow ground, for it is the time to seek the Lord, that he may come and rain righteousness upon you.

Farming metaphors in the Bible are numerous. I personally love them because they are so humble. A haughty farmer is a fool indeed.

Here, instead of chasing after evil, we are called to sew righteousness. To take the fruit of our faith in God and replant it. Now we could take this metaphor to its limits or we can take it a face value, but either way you take it, God wants us to be about the task of sewing and reaping good fruit. As we do this, He will bring the rains we need. He will make our crop grow. And just like a real farmer, we have to remain humble. Plants do not grow solely because the farmer is a hard worker or because of his knowledge. No. Crops grow because of the right mixture of soil, rain, and sun. 2nd graders know this. A farmer is constantly dependent on forces out of his control. This creates a certain amount of  humility (or bitterness, depending). So as we wait for God to bring the things our plants need, we are to wait with humility, knowing that our fruit will never appear unless God is merciful to us. We cannot work hard enough or long enough to be righteous. We can till the ground. We can add fertilizer. We can hire hands. We can get a fancy sprinkler system. We can do a rain dance - you know whatever you want to do, but nothing will ever make us righteous. Only with that perfect balance will true righteousness be gained. Or in this case a full crop of righteousness. [Now available at your local farmers' market haha:P]

Lord, help us to stop trying to achieve something we cannot gain in our own power. Help us to stop working to be righteous be our own strength. Help us to be humble, knowing what we deserve and rejoicing always in what we have been given instead: a life with You. Let this be our first thought. Be our First Love. And as we follow after You, let righteousness flow down like rain and fill our lives. Let us bear good fruit. Let us never forget the reason we are here or the reason we do what we do. Let Your glory be our goal, not our own righteousness. For You alone are righteous.


Amen. Amen. Amen.