Growing up in Wisconsin, I learned there are two ways to look at a harvested cornfield.
Most people see what is gone.
Farmers see what is being prepared.
In August, the corn stands tall, its tassels catching the late summer light. Weeks later, the combines roll through, and the landscape is transformed. To someone passing by, the fields can look worn. Finished. As though their purpose has come to an end.
But that is not how the farmer sees them.
The harvest was never the end of the story.
The stalks are returned to the soil, where they become nourishment for what comes next. Nothing is wasted. What appears spent is quietly enriching the future.
I’ve begun to wonder if we sometimes look at our own lives the way non-farmers look at harvested fields.
We notice what has ended.
God notices what is already being prepared.
Perhaps that is the invitation waiting on the other side of every faithful ending—not to search for something new as quickly as possible, but to learn to see with different eyes.
I’ve been wondering…
Where in my life am I seeing only what has been harvested, instead of trusting what God is already preparing beneath the surface?