By Willianne Olweny, mdw'er in Kenya
The road to our house is surrounded by patches of land on which neighbours grow their vegetables and fruits. It brings me joy every time to see this. The beautiful banana trees with their majestic leaves, the sugar cane, the evergreen mango trees and so on.
Sometimes the fields are in a wild, weedy state and you wonder what is to become of this. Until the owner (or usually owner, as it is often the women who work in the fields) removes all the weeds and ploughs the earth. The beautiful deep red earth reappears and, to my mind, lies there expectantly, waiting for the rain, but also for the sun. And above all waiting for the fruit deep in the earth to die and then come back to life and bring new harvest.
Seeing the first green shoots of maize plants reappearing above the earth, I am often reminded of Jedi Noordegraaf's song: Seed must die in the ground and come to life:
All my field has been ploughed.
Carefully, I sowed all the seeds.
For weeks, I toiled.
Now I wait for the corn to be cut.
Rain makes the earth wet,
sunshine brings light and warmth for growth.
Good soil gives life force:
'The grain rises and comes to full bloom.
Before the seed can bear fruit it will have to go into the ground, and then eventually bear fruit. Sometimes when we experience difficult things, know deep sorrow, worry, see death up close, we may sometimes wonder why we have to go through this, why there is so much pain and sorrow. When we have gone through a difficult period, sometimes we only see the fruits it has brought. Perhaps things have changed, for the better, in your life, in your marriage, your friendships. Or, on the contrary, your faith has deepened, grown, rooted through it.
A while back, I drove past a piece of land where a lot of banana trees were growing. I always think it's a beautiful piece of land, a mango tree, banana trees, sugar cane, it all grows together. But suddenly they had uprooted almost the whole field, a lot of (also young) banana trees had been cut down and chopped up. It looked a bit desolate, to be honest. I marvelled at it and frankly, didn't get it. Why would you do that? Several times I drove past it and kept wondering.
Until I drove past it with Elijah and asked him. Only then did I understand. It was so overgrown with all the banana trees that the new shoots had no place and not enough sunlight to grow properly and give a good harvest. And despite understanding that then, I still thought it looked sad. However, it wasn't long until all the new banana trees started growing.
Less than two weeks later, the first shoots were already emerging from the felled stumps. It taught me that even though the field looked so dead and a bit sad, new life was growing. And in this way, the banana trees that are now small shoots will hopefully bear a beautiful bunch of bananas in 1.5-2 years.
Death does not have the last word, but Life! Something we may (and should) continue to remember in a world full of darkness, death and destruction. God has a plan for our lives.
