Lessons from the Fallow Season: Return to the Basics

I stood at the stove yesterday, stirring a kettle of tapioca pudding. As I stirred, images of my girlhood days rose in my mind. Shiny metal buckets brimmed with warm, foaming milk fresh from our cow. We strained it through a cloth to remove the bits of straw and crud. The full jars clinked together as we stored them in the fridge; gloppy yellow cream rose on the cold milk. Our eggs came from the henhouse where I often slipped my hand under a setting hen, drew out the warm brown eggs, laying them in my basket.

We often made pudding to use our ample supply of those basics. Not the boxed kind, but the sort that starts with sugar, flour, and cornstarch in a saucepan. I recall the raw simplicity of those days. Farm life was simple, basic.

Winter was a quiet season. Growing up on the farm, winter meant returning to the quiet, behind-the-scenes work that readied us for the growing season. It also meant survival in the often-brutal Midwestern winters. It meant quiet work done in preparation for busier times, it meant returning to the basics that make life doable, and even pleasant and peaceable when the green and golden fields of summer seemed like a distant memory.  

In this fallow season—this winter in my soul, my thoughts gravitate back toward the spiritual basics that make day-to-day life sustainable and doable in this fallen world when life seems little more than gray-brown drudgery and endless cold.

My pondering has led me again and again to the holy Scriptures. It is the source from which we gain all our spiritual strength, knowledge, and sustenance as Christians. In short, it is our divine power source. In fact, it is from the Scriptures that we learn anything we know about God, the Holy Spirit, Jesus Christ, and His redemptive work on our behalf.

He is our divine Power Source, and if we are not fully connected to Him, our spiritual well-being is unsustainable. Our connection to Him is through the Scriptures. In Scripture, we learn Who God is and that He is worthy of all our praise, adoration, and worship. It is through the Scriptures that we learn of the Holy Spirit and of His empowering, sanctifying, and purifying work within the believer. It is through the Scriptures that we learn of our lost and enslaved state, and it is through the Scriptures that we learn He came to redeem us.

It is through the Scriptures that we learn Him; He is the Source from which all our spiritual understanding and provisions flow. He is the Bread of Life for our spiritual hunger. He is the Living Water for our spiritual thirst. He is the Source of our healing, the cleansing and salve for our wounded souls.

The Scriptures are the basics—the rich, deep basics of the Christian life that inform us, sustain us, and connect us to our divine source.  When we neglect it, we do so to our own peril, as the winter blahs can settle into our souls very quickly. Our power ebbs away, and we become spiritually thickheaded and dull. Our spiritual hunger and thirst may lead us to seek the true nourishment we lack in lesser sources. We may become spiritually weak and sickly without knowing exactly why, as our soul wounds lie untreated and festering.

The Scriptures tell us again and again, in large and small ways, the big story of God’s pursuit of mankind. It tells the story of our fall, redemption, and restoration, as well as the overarching story of His redemptive and restorative work, His relentless pursuit of us, and His divine sovereignty over all things.

The Scriptures themselves are the basics, and by plumbing their depths in these fallow seasons, we ready the soil of our hearts for planting in days to come. We revisit the old treasures and dig deeper for the new. We do the behind-the-scenes work in quiet places in these fallow days to unpack the depth and richness that dwells within the holy Scriptures. There, we find the age-old story repeated in narrative, poetry, wisdom, and prophecy, underscored on every page.

There, our beautiful Savior arises from every page. In these quiet seasons, He comes close, speaks over us His calling, and stirs the slumbering embers within us-- embers that will snap with life once again when He breathes upon them.

Here in a fallow season in my soul, there are simple lessons to be learned. Here, I revisit, recalibrate, refuel, and re-energize with the basic, timeless truths of Scripture. Just as I took the milk, eggs, and a few pantry staples, and transformed them into delicious, comforting nourishment for my family and me, so I turn to the Scriptures, take the basic truths I glean there, and combine them with faithful obedience. In so doing, I can nourish my soul with truth, gain strength and spiritual muscle with each step of faithful obedience.

So, each time I stand at my stove stirring a saucepan of pudding, I will remember not only my girlhood days on the farm, but I will remember the basics—the simplicity. I will let these simple ingredients, turned into homespun comfort food, remind me of the basics of the Christian life. I will let it remind me to return to the source from which flows all my spiritual sustenance--the holy Scriptures, for in them is power, in them is life.