The Middle Years

Restore our fortunes, LORD,

as streams renew the desert.

Those who plant in tears

will harvest with shouts of joy. Psalm 126:4-5

WHEN THE PEOPLE OF GOD came back to Jerusalem after being in exile for seventy years, they were filled with laughter and sang for joy. “It was like a dream!” the psalmist writes. The whole world was talking about all the Lord had done for his people.

But once they arrived back home, the Israelites faced the overwhelming challenge of rebuilding the city of Jerusalem. What once was like a dream now felt like a desert existence. Once they were filled with laughter, but now they wept as they worked. At first, everyone was celebrating what God had done; now all they could see was what they needed him to do. They prayed that God would pour out his Spirit like water on the dry ground of their lives and generate newness and joy as they kept rebuilding. They looked forward to all that God had promised but were finding it hard to keep putting one foot in front of the other in this in-between time.

Their experience is a little like parenting, which starts out with so much joy and celebration over a new tiny life. But then the novelty wears off, and the work begins. Sometimes it’s so hard that we weep as we go. So what do we do in the difficult middle years as we plod along in parenting? We pray, asking God to break through. We ask him to turn the rut we’re in into a river of his grace. And as we wait in hope for this divine intervention, instead of shriveling up or checking out, we keep sowing seeds of gospel truth and godly wisdom into the lives of our children.

Lord, I remember the excitement and joy of having a newborn. But some days in these middle years of parenting seem so hard. So I’m asking you to rain down your grace on our home and water the seeds I’m continuing to sow, sometimes in tears. I’m believing that what I see now is not how things will be in the end. In faith I’m trusting that the ultimate outcome of ________’s life will not be shame or ruin or destruction or tears, but that one day there will be a huge harvest for all of my sowing so that we’ll celebrate with shouts of joy.