Going Forth Weeping

It cost him something last night and this morning there is nothing to show for the cost.

That is the specific shape of it, and it is worth being precise, because it is not the same as the ordinary flat morning. Something was actually paid. He sat up late and did a hard thing, and it was not comfortable, and by the end of it he was wrung out in the way you are after a real conversation rather than a difficult one.

He went to bed emptied.

And at seven this morning, standing in the kitchen with the coffee going, there is no return. The house is as it was. He feels tired rather than lighter. Nothing in his chest is doing anything to acknowledge what last night took out of him.

Now here is the thought that arrives with the coffee, and it is the reason I am writing this. If it cost that much and produced nothing, then either it was not worth what it cost, or it did not work.

That is the sum a tired man does at seven in the morning. And in my family, where everything is loud and everything is discussed, that particular sum is done in complete silence by men who would talk about anything else.

That is you with the coffee.

You paid something real. And you have been looking, since you woke up, for the return on it, and there is not one, and the absence has quietly begun to argue that the cost was wasted.

The psalm puts the weeping inside the sowing

Here is a psalm written by people who knew exactly what it is to do something costly with no visible result, and watch where it locates the tears.

They that sow in tears shall reap in joy. He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him.Psalm 126:5-6

They that sow in tears.

The tears are not in the failure. They are in the sowing. That is the whole geography of this psalm and almost nobody notices it: weeping is placed inside the act of planting rather than after a crop has failed.

Which means the cost you paid last night is not evidence that something went wrong. In this psalm, cost is what sowing feels like from the inside when the seed matters.

You are described in that verse as a sower rather than as somebody who has failed at something, and the tears are in the planting where the psalm puts them, and I am not decorating this: Psalm 126:5 says they that sow in tears, in writing, and it is the Holy Spirit rather than my saying so who can get that to a man at a kitchen counter at seven.

Now look at the phrase bearing precious seed, because it explains why it costs. In that world seed was food. Sowing meant carrying out into a field the grain you could have eaten, and putting it in the ground, and walking home with an empty basket and a hungry house. That is why they wept. Not because they were sad people. Because sowing is the act of giving away something you needed.

So the emptiness you woke up with is not a sign that nothing happened. It is exactly what a man feels walking back from a field with an empty basket.

You have an empty basket rather than a wasted evening, and the emptiness is what carrying the seed out actually leaves behind, which is written into the image rather than into my sympathy for a hard night, with the Spirit of God able to settle it where a sum done at seven in the morning cannot be argued with.

And notice the word the psalm uses about the return. Doubtless. It is not a promise about when, and there is no date anywhere in the psalm, and I am not going to put one there. It is a word about certainty rather than timing, and it belongs to God and not to your calendar.

This morning is the walk back from the field, and the basket is meant to be empty, because Scripture puts the weeping in the sowing, and the Holy Spirit is the one carrying that into a kitchen with the coffee going.