Plowing pain into purpose

Ann Voskamp asks at A Holy Experience,

How in the world do you grow in grace in the face of those who grow in resentment toward you?

She is writing about a Christian farmer she met last year on a trip to Israel. The farmer had been victimized by people who cut down his fruit trees, cut off his water and electricity. The farmer told Ann,

“All we want is to just stay on our land.

We come from a long line of Christians, Lutherans — and my Grandfather didn’t want to just live in the village and work the land, like all his neighbours. He wanted to be on the land, he wanted to live out on the land, he wanted to raise his children out on the land — so he came out here and lived on the caves in these fields, so his children would be grow up close to the land, the land always under their feet.”

And I nod real slow — I can hear the man reverberating in the spaces between the marrow of my bones.

Farmers get it in a peculiar kind of way: There is nothing quite like land, because it is that which we come from and that which we will return and that which feeds us in between. We’re all dust and we grow out of this earth’s dust and we’re connected to the earth like it’s a kind of kin. Strangely enough: Until we come to peace with what land is, we live in conflict with what living is.

My grandad always said it: Grounded people care deeply about the ground — because they are rooted from that which they came and all that will end up being and they know who they are.

The word humility comes from humus, comes from the earth that lies underneath us.

It’s only when you know you come from humble dirt that you can bear any honest fruit.

My dad always said, “There’s a lot I may love — but my land….my land.” My dad always said that selling away your land is like selling away your soul.

“You understand? We cannot leave our land… and we cannot be enemies.”

Our eyes don’t leave each other — we all belong to each other and to this dirt — and what happens next rips through my rib cage like the force of God.

The light catches his eye and his life grows into this blazing grace:

The only thing that can overcome evil is good. Returning evil with evil — just overcomes us.The only thing that can overcome evil is good. Returning evil with evil — just overcomes us.
That’s all we’ve got here:

Being enemies is not an option.

Being human beings who belong to each other is the only option.

And it doesn’t make one iota of difference if you’re living in the middle of global war zones or some battle zone in your own church, community, kid or marriage — or if you’re fighting a battle inside yourself:

You can either ruminate like a beast over the injustice of it all, till you feel some literal heartburn and the scorch of the whole thing searing off real layers of your soul — or you can plow the pain into purpose.

Farmer Daoud had grabbed that plow: “We take all our frustrations over injustices and we drill them into soil to grow incredible possibilities.”

...The world would change if, like Jesus, we chose
a donkey over a steed,
a cross over a crown,
a palm branch over bitterness,
and grace over guilt.

...Jesus said: “I’m telling you to love your enemies. Let them bring out the best in you, not the worst.” (Matt. 5:43)

Let your enemies not bring out the worst in you — but the best in you, the fruit in you.

Read more and see Ann's photos of the farmer, his land, and Jerusalem here.