When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion,
we were like those who dreamed.
Our mouths were filled with laughter,
our tongues with songs of joy.
Then it was said among the nations,
“The Lord has done great things for them.”
The Lord has done great things for us,
and we are filled with joy.
Restore our fortunes, Lord,
like streams in the Negev,
Those who sow with tears
will reap with songs of joy.
Those who go out weeping,
carrying seed to sow,
will return with songs of joy,
carrying sheaves with them.
I remember that my father liked the hymn, “Bringing in the sheaves.”
It was one of those songs we only sang in our church at evening worship when the old Cokesbury hymnal was used–it wasn’t in the later hymnals.
For a long time the song made no sense to me until I learned that the sheaves are the bundles of grain stalks gathered together at harvest time.
It’s more of an agricultural image than most songs we use today…the image is of a bountiful harvest after a time of weeping. Perhaps the first good harvest following a drought or a plague. In more modern images, we might think of a first paycheck after a time of unemployment.
Whatever the image, it’s the particular joy that comes from experiencing something good after a season where goodness was in short supply. Sometimes when things are generally going well, we can focus deliberately on our blessings and realize how much we truly have, but that’s not our natural tendency–we naturally tend to forget how good we have it.
But after things have been bad, tht which is good is recognizable for the great gift that it is.
That is why Advent precedes Christmas and Lent precedes Easter. To recall how much we have been blessed by the light, we have to remember the darkness the light has overcome.
Or, as the third verse of “Bringing in the Sheaves” says,
Going forth with weeping, sowing for the Master,
though the loss sustained our spirit often grieves;
when our weeping’s over He will bid us welcome –
we shall come rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves.