Bryan Ickes

misererelent:

Day 23 | Plate 22 Of so many different domains, the noble work of sowing in hostile land.

He turns rivers into a desert, springs of water into thirsty ground, a fruitful land into a salty waste, because of the evil of its inhabitants.
He turns a desert into pools of water, a parched land into springs of water.
And there he lets the hungry dwell, and they establish a city to live in; they sow fields and plant vineyards and get a fruitful yield.

Psalm 107:33-37

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Unless God himself prepares the place for us, as he did Eden, and is now preparing in his Father’s mansion, God swore that our relationship with the earth would be strained.

In this scene, the sower and his house are lean and simple. Both reveal a life of subsistence. Work is a means for survival; nothing more than a means to live another day and a chance to collect more memories of God’s goodness.

He has known sadness, doubt and fear. He has watched his seeds wither and burn. He’s awoken to see the spores of some pestilence quickly wilting his field. He’s heard the ravaging beasts pillage his field during the night. He has lain in bed, too sick to crawl and gather the ripening fruit before it fell to the swirling pests. He’s doubted he has what it takes.

The weatherbeaten farmer has suffered, but the void it has etched in his soul is also reservoir for delight. For the fruits of each harvest have become the symbol of his celebration. Beyond sustaining the life of his household, they punctuate each rolling year as memorials of God’s enduring fidelity.

He has paced his field many times, and he knows where the stones lie embedded and where the fertile patches are. Each season, he carves the soil and watches the earth envelope the seeds. He waits long days, and when the rain comes, he bursts from is hut dancing as David before God. The tender plants join his dance in the rain, drinking deep of the dew of heaven and shining in their emerald way as Moses did after his descents from Sinai.

Like the farmer, wherever we go, the harvests we long for will only come after our anticipation and disillusionment, education and forgetfulness; joy and grief. Often, the greatest harvests will come to the most diligent farmers, but not always. Whatever the work he has given us, the harvest is a gift from his hands. Each is a miracle.

The harvests are our manna along our desert wandering until we reach the mountain of God, adorned in His holiness, and finally ascend to his everlasting embrace. Only then, we will want no more.

Plate Six | Are We Not Convicts?

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Thus says the Lord:
“In a time of favor I have answered you;
in a day of salvation I have helped you;
I will keep you and give you
as a covenant to the people,
to establish the land,
to apportion the desolate heritages,
saying to the prisoners, ‘Come out,’
to those who are in darkness, ‘Appear.’
They shall feed along the ways;
on all bare heights shall be their pasture;
they shall not hunger or thirst,
neither scorching wind nor sun shall strike them,
for he who has pity on them will lead them,
and by springs of water will guide them.

Isaiah 49:8-10

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“Are We Not Convicts? What a way to begin a conversation!

This is a rhetorical question asked among those sentenced. Yes, Rouault, we don’t usually feel the weight of it, but it is sadly as you say. Each of us wanders, knowing alone the hurt we’ve each committed; the bridges we’ve burned, the goodness we intended but never acted upon.

I have heard that the book of Deuteronomy is referred to as The Wilderness in the Hebrew bible. I bet more people would explore these pages, revealing God’s purposes during the desert exile, if we too inherited this title.

We long for the comfort and familiarity of home, but we’d much sooner listen to a story that takes place in the wilderness. Why? Because, the wilderness has no interest in preserving our tranquility. It is a place of testing. It is place where our longings, normally kept tucked and groomed, are exposed and then chafed and made raw. The wilderness either kills us, or we’re rescued from it.

Israel’s origin was a verdant place of safety, community and joy. It had so much peace that it requires a redefinition of what *home* looks like, for walls and a roof are not needed in a place specifically made *for* us. But the joys of Eden are foreign to us now, and Scripture alone can reveal such harmony to us in the wilderness places we each inhabit. For when we tried to take over the house, the Owner kicked us out. He kicked us out, not with the intention to abandon us, but to incite a lifelong journey of discovery. A story that he would resolve back where we began; having come to know him as Father and not merely the Law.

Home is in the distance in Rouault’s sixth plate. We’re all stripped naked, and we’re not an attractive lot. The man in the foreground, though he wears no chained cuffs on his wrists, yet feels the bite of the metal. He knows his condition. He continues by the ever so faint hope that in the end, all will be well; that the Voice he hears in the heights proclaims a truth more real than the sun baking cancer into his flesh and the uncertainty ever tempting him to collapse into the dust forever.

“In an acceptable time”…he keeps repeating the promise given him, “in an acceptable time…have I heard…have I helped…”