The spring feasts teach us to prepare the ground for harvest. That ground is us. We are the field.
We tend to focus on those things that appear above the ground but there is more to us than just the fruit that comes in the fall.
It turns out there are valuables UNDER my field, as well.
Think about a granite countertop. These beautiful stones lie beneath the surface and merely need to be mined, cut, shaped, and polished. Then you get many years of utility and beauty from this product and work. The steps involved to get from mining to delivery include:
- The stone has to be located. How does one even know what to look for? If I were to dig in my field and came across a big rock, how am I to know what sort of value CAN come from it? Is this just experience and/or expertise? Same with small jewels. It is amazing what lies beneath my field that I don’t even realize is there. Maybe this is where trials come into the picture.
- The stone has to be mined. Now that we’ve realized there is a wealth of beautiful stone under my field, how do I get it out. Do I need certain tools to dig and extract these large embedded slabs? Will I need help from others? Is this when I need to call on the community to help? Or should I have set myself up to have workers within my home? Hired help may be able to do it but will they take care not to disrupt the plants growing in the field?
- The stone has to be cut. In order to use the stone, it has to be cut into usable pieces. How do you carefully cut this stone without ruining it? In our case, we need a thin slab to use as a work surface. The precision needed calls for patience and delicate care.
- The stone has to be polished. This is when the beauty starts to become evident. 3 stages must come first before you can even see how gorgeous the finished product will be. Many stages of finer and finer grit sanding material to knock down the roughness until you get a brilliant shine. Again, much patience is required. And you need tools that are essentially the same but much more refined.
- The stone has to be shaped. Depending on the intended need, the piece must be further refined to take on the shape of the target application. More precise measurements required. Planning on how you want to use it also needs to be considered (rounded corners, amount of overhang, etc). Finer and more precise cuts convert a raw slab into its needed shape. Cuts expose rougher surfaces so the polishing needs to happen again. These cuts may matter the most since one wrong move can ruin the entire piece and you must start again.
- The stone is then installed. The surface must be level and ready to receive the finished stone. Larger spaces are harder to level so some shimming may be necessary. Just be careful not to create too many gaps. Otherwise, the errors in leveling will be magnified. Or worse, you may create weaknesses in the slab that will show up later in the form of a crack in the surface.
- The stone is ready for use. After all of that, you can now use your new surface to share food, drinks, and stories. Amazing how something like this can fade into the background but will become a witness to years of relational interactions.
What stones are under my field that can ultimately contribute (silently) to our relationships? These are the huge things embedded deep within us.
Our gifts are examples of these huge stones. They support our field from underneath but once they come to the surface they have the potential to contribute greatly to our lives and relationships.
If the raw material surfaces and we don’t go to work on preparing it, it will just be a big rock that is in the way.
Dig, dig, dig. Then ask for wisdom on how to handle the deep things Abba has embedded within you.
