A Story For You: The Sower (Pt. I)

I would like to begin something new in this post. Poetry has always fascinated me, but I have always shared a love for prose and short fiction. This piece is entitled The Sower and I will break it up in a few posts for you. I hope you enjoy it and I will have shorter posts sprinkled in for the upcoming week.

“Sow to yourselves in righteousness, reap in mercy; break up your fallow ground: for it is time to seek the Lord till he come and rain righteousness upon you.” (Hosea 10: 12)

The sower inherits calloused hands. Weary, he toils in the sun until twilight. He runs his fingers through the richness of the soil. His efforts go unnoticed on the still mountainside. The seed he plants become his children, and he waters them with prayer. He watches over them with hawkish eyes.

Time lapses as he waits for the harvest. He anticipates hope springing from the earth. But he questions his methods in a quiet contemplation and brews his prospects on black nights with eyes wide open. He longs for the maturation of his seed like a bird nudging his young ones in flight. Time becomes unbearable and his impatient roots begin to grow. But he senses he cannot abandon what God has given him.

Then one morning, while he lay asleep, little leaves sprouted from the brown earth. At dawn, they rose like sleepy children from their beds and his plants were innumerable and plenteous. The stalks were thick and green and water flowed through their roots like veins. Life sprung from the earth and scattered for miles in either direction. He returns to his homeland carrying his baskets with him.