We Are Sowing…

Remembered from the years of youth are these words from an old song.

“We are sowing, daily sowing

Countless seeds of good and ill,

Scattered on the level lowland,

Cast upon the windy hill;

Seeds that sink in rich, brown furrows,

Soft with heaven’s gracious rain;

Seeds that rest upon the surface

Of the dry unyielding plain.”¹

Whether the lessons of life sink deep or stay shallow on the surface is always a cause of concern. But one fact is the sequence of cause and consequence. And one of the greatest lessons of life for young people is that we live in a world of law, and that ultimately, and indeed daily, we are accountable for our own choices and decisions and individual acts and utterances⎯and for our intent. And yet the endeavor to shift responsibility is one of life’s most prevalent pursuits: to blame others, to blame the past, to excuse what is wrong, even to condone what is knowingly and deliberately done, to tolerate what is actually evil. All of us are making our own record daily, hourly, each instant. And beyond all else there are choices, for which we are personally responsible. And despite the rationalizing or justifying, or what shifting of responsibility we seek, we are ourselves, in a sense, our own written record. “A man can only achieve strength . . . by the action of his own free-will,” said Samuel Smiles. . . .and within the range of self-discipline. And it depends upon men themselves whether . . . they will be free, pure, and good, on the one hand; enslaved, impure, and miserable, on the other.”² “There will be no true freedom without virtue, . . . “³ And choosing to live within the law is among the great privileges and obligations of the free living of life.

“Thou who knowest all our weakness

Leave us not to sow alone!

Bid thine angels guard the furrows

Where the precious grain is sown,

Till the fields are crowned with glory,

Filled with mellow, ripened ears,

Filled with fruit of life eternal

From the seed we sowed in tears.”¹