The Harvest of Our Losses

Stewardship is an act of faith, deeply dependent on God’s ability to bring life into dead and dying things. To steward well often means to lose: We steward time well by giving it up. We steward talents by using them, regardless of the cost in embarrassment or energy. We steward money by letting it go.

What is God asking you to put in the ground? The harvest of our losses, stewarded in the ground, brings a joy and abundance we cannot imagine. A life of stewardship becomes a life of planting in hope, losing intentionally for the sake of another, and waiting for the abundance of the promised resurrection.

– Madison Wilcox

Psalm 126 (paraphrased)

By Madison Wilcox

I

You are the soil

in which all dead things come alive.

We once watched the resurrection

of all that You had taken.

Every small thing You swallowed up

from our trembling hands

You returned to us

a hundredfold.

II

We once awakened

into a life we did not recognize

for the beauty of it.

We walked entranced

as You filled our tired hands

with sudden fruit.

You fed us a miracle;

It tasted like laughter.

We opened our mouths, and joy spilled out.

III

We hope our joy will one day fill the earth.

We hope someone will see it from afar and say:

Only God could make a man laugh like that.

Only God could raise up joy like that

out of a sorrow like this.

Oh, we are glad.

IV

Return to us again

all that You have taken.

Resurrect again

all that we have buried

in the ground. 

We know the harvest will soon overtake us

like a desert flood.

We know our present tears

are an omen

of a greater joy to come.

Yes, we will weep, and we will sow.

We will let the soil swallow

all that is in our hands.

For the harvest comes as surely as the planting,

and the living as surely as the dying.

Soon it will spring up

like laugher in our mouths.

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