Those who walk the fields to sow, casting their seed in tears,
will one day tread those same long rows, amazed by what’s appeared.
Those who weep as they walk and plant with sighs
Will return singing with joy, when they bring home the harvest.
Psalm 126: 5-6.
“Will he play ball too?” my brother asks a woman cradling an infant at the youth baseball field.
“We’ll have to see what gifts are inside of him,” she smiles.
He’s a few years from sliding home at a ballfield. But his mama is open to other possibilities. Music perhaps, art or scholarship. Her tiny boy is a bundle of unwrapped gifts waiting to open themselves to the world.
Her joy in his possibilities glows from her eyes. And she knows the one who gave the gifts. She sees His reflection in the child–imago Dei, the image of God.
No matter how old we get we are each a bundle of gifts waiting to unwrap themselves to the world. Some gifts show themselves early. Some gifts get stunted and never open.
Some blossom late and surprise us with shock of color, motion, words.
The pain of birth brings a new bundle of gifts. But it takes the hurts of life to pull open latent gifts, unimagined qualities that, without seeding tears, would not open.
Sometimes we see a bundle but do not recognize the gifts. We assume there is nothing to open, nothing to give. But these bundles have wonderful gifts. They show us meaning in simplicity. Imago Dei again.
If we can see these bundles as gift bearers, they will teach us to open more of ourselves. They bestow their gifts and increase the harvest of our own.
We are imago Dei. Each of us a bundle of gifts that spends a lifetime opening. Seed tears plant crops that bring joy as the gifts come to harvest.
Wise eyes see the beauty in a tiny bundle whose gifts do not yet show.
Restoring the Shattered
