Dirt Can Be Pretty

Dirt can be pretty. That’s something I learned a long time ago as a teenager working on a South Texas cotton farm. At the end of the season, after all of the plowing, sowing, cultivating, hoeing, stripping, stomping, baling, stalk-cutting and plowing again, that rich, deep black soil, ready for a new season of growth, was nothing short of beautiful. Well, maybe you have to be a farmer or gardener or a teenager who is very glad to see the END of a work season to think so, but dirt, I believe, can be pretty.

Not fallow ground, crusted over from seasons past, but sod freshly broken up and turned over, ready for a new season of growth. I recently saw a large field of that kind of dirt and immediately knew what it meant—somebody, who knew what he was doing, had plowed it up and was about to sow fresh seed, develop a new crop, and, eventually, reap a great harvest. That dirt was, well, beautiful, and it was the brokenness of it that made it so. There was a lot of hope in that dirt.

We all know brokenness. We just don’t always think about how beautiful it is to that Someone tilling in the soil of our hearts. Sometimes, it seems, He plows a bit deep—businesses fail, jobs disappear, diseases appear, marriages dissolve, friends move on, children grow up way too quickly and move off to college, and the only Dad we’ve ever known leaves for Heaven. Hearts and lives broken up and turned over by the harrowing hand of the Sovereign.

Yet, I’m trying to learn how to be grateful for the brokenness when it comes. My Savior, that Someone, knows exactly what He is doing, breaking up the soil of my heart, preparing it and me for a new season of growth, and unimaginable fruitfulness and harvest. I’m trying to learn to see what He sees—that dirt can be pretty, especially the kind that is broken up and turned over. There is a lot of hope in that kind of dirt.