Nothing Is In The Ground Now

There is nothing in the ground and there will not be for months.

And the question that keeps arriving, in one form or another, is what it is supposed to be doing out there.

That question has an answer and the answer is going to sound like evasion at first: nothing. It is not supposed to be doing anything.

You are looking at ground that is doing exactly what it is for, and a season that produces nothing has never once been a season that failed.

Now, there is a version of this that everybody will offer you, and it is wrong in a way that is worth being precise about.

The version goes: the ground is recovering. It is building up what it spent. It is getting ready for the spring, and the fallow months are an investment in the growing ones.

That sounds right. Some of it is even true agronomically. And as a way of thinking about rest it is a trap, because it makes the resting a service to the working.

If the empty months exist in order to improve the full ones, then rest has been converted into a kind of work. A quieter kind, done by the soil rather than by you, but work, with an output, justified by a yield.

And a rest that has to justify itself by what it produces is not rest. It is maintenance with better manners.

A sabbath of rest unto the land

There is a line in Leviticus about resting ground, and the grammar of it settles this entirely.

Six years thou shalt sow thy field, and six years thou shalt prune thy vineyard, and gather in the fruit thereof; But in the seventh year shall be a sabbath of rest unto the land, a sabbath for the LORD. (Leviticus 25:3 and 4, King James Version)

A sabbath of rest unto the land.

Now, look at that preposition, because everything is in it. Unto the land.

Not for the sake of the harvest. Not in order to restore the soil. Unto the land, which makes the land the recipient of the rest rather than the instrument of a later crop.

You are looking at a rest given to the ground rather than taken from it, and a fallow season has never once been described there as a service to the years around it. Leviticus 25:4 says unto the land, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes a preposition in an old law land on a man looking at his own empty beds.

And then the second half of the verse, which goes further than most people notice. A sabbath for the LORD.

So the resting is not even for the land's own benefit in the end. It is for God. The ground is keeping a sabbath, the way a person does, and it is kept toward Him rather than toward the next harvest.

You are watching ground keep something rather than recover from something, and an empty field has never once been merely out of service. The Holy Spirit is the one to whom that sabbath is kept, and the written word says a sabbath for the LORD rather than a sabbath for the sake of the yield.

And notice what is absent from the whole passage. There is no agronomy in it.

Nobody explains the soil science. Nobody says the nitrogen recovers or the structure improves. The instruction is given without any productive reason attached, which means the reason is not the productivity.

You are not being given a yield as the justification, and a command with no productive reason attached has never once been a command about productivity. The Spirit of God is the one who gave the instruction without explaining a mechanism, and the word names no benefit to any harvest anywhere in it.

It is not the corridor between two springs

Let me be plain about the thing this whole row exists to say, because it is the last of the seven and it is the one that holds.

These months are not a corridor.

They are not the bit between the end of one growing year and the start of the next. They are months, with their own weather and their own light, and the ground in them is doing what the law in Leviticus says it should be doing, which is keeping a sabbath.

That is not a gap in the year. It is part of the year, with its own character, and it is the part the law names.

You are standing in a named part of the year rather than in a gap between the named parts, and a fallow season has never once been the unnamed stretch between two real ones. The Holy Spirit is the one who gives a season its own standing, and Leviticus 25:4 names the seventh year specifically rather than treating it as the leftover.

And here is the thing that matters about getting this right, which is not really about soil.

What a man believes about the ground, he will eventually apply to himself. A man who thinks the empty months are for recharging will think the same about his own rest, and he will rest in order to work, and he will never once have an hour that was simply his.

The ground is the easier case. It is out there, it is not you, and nobody is going to accuse it of laziness. So it is the place to get the principle straight.

You are able to settle a principle on ground before it has to be settled on a person, and what a man believes about a fallow field has never once stayed out in the field. The Spirit of God is the one who establishes a pattern in the easier case first, and the written word gives the land its own sabbath before it ever comes to the man.

Look at it without planning

So here is the assignment, and it is the closing one.

Walk out and look at the empty ground once this week without planning anything.

To the edge of the beds, in whatever light there is. Stand there and look at it.

You are able to look at your own ground without making a plan for it, and a minute of plain looking has never once been a minute with nothing in it. Leviticus 25:4 gives the land a sabbath unto itself, and the Holy Spirit is the one out there while a man looks at bare soil.

And without planning is the whole instruction. Everything else is just walking outside.

The planning will start, and quickly, because planning is how a man with ground looks at ground. That corner. The rotation. What went where last year.

When it starts, come back to what is actually in front of you, which is soil keeping a sabbath in February.

You are able to look at a thing as it is rather than as it will be, and ground in February has never once been a draft of ground in May. The Holy Spirit is the one present in the looking rather than in the devising, and the word puts the seventh year under its own name rather than under the sixth or the eighth.

And do nothing at all out there. Not one thing. It is keeping a sabbath and it does not need you.