Broken By The Plow

Broken by the Plow

I don’t know much about plowing. I’ve certainly never walked behind a plow, although long ago I rode on a tractor with my grandfather as he dug deep furrows in West Texas earth for cottonseed to nestle in and grow. I remember the rich smell of turned-up earth and how good it felt to sit tucked up under his chin as we rumbled over broken soil.

The earth doesn’t seem to mind its bruising, but oh, how I mind mine. A no when you’ve prayed for a yes, or slamming doors or angry words can jar the joy right out of your day. Little slights you’re used to ignoring can become supersized when what you needed instead was kindness. Disappointment can seem as sharp as the point of any plow, and so can confusion and longing and waiting—and the quiet cuts they make.

It’s no fun being broken by the plow. But such plowing is the very tool God often uses to turn me over and ready me for whatever good he means to give. I’d resist if I could, but he’s bigger and stronger—and besides, I can’t see past the row I’m on. He can. He is a wise and loving husbandman.

A. W. Tozer says, “The plowed life is the life that has . . . thrown down the protecting fences and sent the plow of confession into the soul. . . . Discontent, yearning, contrition, courageous obedience to the will of God: these have bruised and broken the soil till it is ready again for the seed. And as always fruit follows the plow.”^a

I don’t always love the plow. But I love the Tiller of my soul and the fruit he means to bring. And until the next harvest season, I can breathe in deep and find comfort in the smell of the rich and readied earth he turns . . . even when its rows are cut in me.

There is an appointed time for everything . . . a time to plant and a time to uproot what is planted. . . . He has made everything appropriate in its time.

Ecclesiastes 3:1-2, 11 NASB

^a A. W. Tozer, “Miracles Follow the Plow,” in Paths to Power (Chicago: Moody, 2016); emphasis added.