This is a fallow field, God said. I looked up. It stretched away from me, trampled and desolate, an asymmetric tangle of weeds and loose rocks lodged forlornly across its lunar topography. Unremarkable and lonely. Incongruent with the bustle of spring around me. It was the 14th April 2023. A particularly verdant spring day had greeted me as I set out early that morning; hues of blue, gold and lime finally overwhelming the pallor of an insistent winter whose monochromatic palette had leaked too far across the canvas of the year. I’d walked for a long time, winding my way through early bluebells patterned beneath stirring sycamores, groaning as they stretched out atrophied limbs whilst elastic daffodils gently bobbed and nodded in sympathetic approval. Eventually a cracked tow path led my tired feet towards home and I’d stumbled into the final field before the road to my apartment, eyeing up with distaste the lactic laden yards of the hill ahead. Up until then, there had been no conversation. Birdsong, the indignant splash of a startled moorhen. For mile upon mile I’d hibernated in apparently subterranean solitude whilst wordless syllables rushed through the trees above, ushering silent clouds in largos of white noise to unreachable resting places beyond the baby blue horizon. No one had spoken a word. But now He did. Breathless, muddy and limping to a halt, I stopped and listened. It’s a fallow field. Left uncultivated to recover. You’re tired, said God. And soon I will bring you into a fallow field season. The work you are doing will come to an end. 

Impossible. That was my initial thought. No prizes for faith here. In my head there was not even the remotest chance of that occurring for a plethora of reasons too long winded to explain now. But let’s cut the embarrassing part where I doubted for a while and time skip to almost exactly a year later. The impossible had of course materialised, both of my jobs had come to an end and I found myself sat in the middle of my own uncultivated moment on a not so sunny Monday morning, repentant, a little bewildered and facing a stark and blank new day over a pensive flat white. 

Fallow. A period of time characterised by inaction. Unproductive. Ouch. In a western culture defined by output, achievement and numerical success, this was probably going to be painful. A death of sorts. No more subliminal identity through work, career or vision. Instead a chasm of paralysing options and middle age approaching like a sandstorm during a picnic. Income and expenditure now a totally different equation. I stirred my coffee slowly, watching the birds who neither sow nor reap living their best life in my hedgerow.

I dreaded the inevitable question from intrigued peers and it soon came: ‘What are you going to do?’ the last word emphasised with a vague look of concern and pity. My blank face and stammered response did nothing to allay well meant speculation. The status quo was now ‘status quoi?’ My default was defunct. No longer could I answer the usual Sunday morning church small talk with ‘My week? SO busy! Too much really. Very tired. But you know, lots to be thankful for, God’s good! Is that more coffee? YES please’ (slurp). 

Nope. This was me pruned. No hiding behind interminable industry and reluctant capitalism. God hadn’t told me exactly what I was to do, only that I wasn’t to look for a job. But if a person doesn’t work he won’t eat, I protested one morning, pointing to Thessalonians in a counter offensive prayer move as I tried to manoeuvre a bishop, seemingly in the guise of St. Paul, into position against the divine Grandmaster. It’s there, in black and white. Around me the windows of necessary provision swung quietly open on new hinges as God casually cleared my chessboard in a tiny number of deft and unassailable moves. Checkmate.

The other path I dared to whisper out loud sounded hollow and foolhardy. There’s no money in that, well meaning voices in my head would cry. Have you thought about this, others would chime in. Rather than voice my tepid dreams I found myself covering for my spinning compass with empty platitudes and scrambled justification for my lack of vocational activity. I’m busy with other things, loads to do really, space to plan. ‘I won’t be bored don’t you worry!’ I cried with an inane grin, brandishing my shiny new shovel with alacrity, partly in hope, partly in self defence. But in truth, the ground around me wasn’t getting any softer. No matter how much I dug, there wasn’t much progress. 

The cliches run rampant here. A closed door. A new chapter. The end of an era. A fresh start. All true, all slightly unhelpful. What I’ve come to realise about the fallow season is the promise it holds. It is precious and potent liminality, gift wrapped in the gold leaf of hope. It is the prelude of winter before the rite of spring, the drop of the diaphragm before the operatic F sharp semibreve, the deep dip of the ocean wave before it roars towards the shore. It is a moment of resurrection. Of anastasis. Death to life. Sure and certain. 

In Leviticus 25, the fallow year for the field is a legal obligation. This was a command that required the obedient faith of the farmer and a willingness to play the long game. I’m sure the ground would have brought forth something if they had chosen to sow but God isn’t messing around. The purpose of this enforced arable abstinence? A time of rest for the land to heal and to ensure it brings forth a rich harvest the following year. It was a sabbath principle, commanded every 7th year, no doubt with prophetic as well as practical implications. It marks the termination of a cycle, the end of a season of continual productivity and the establishing of a counter cultural pattern of sustainable cultivation. The land must be allowed to appear lifeless. Its purpose is set aside. It is of no apparent use, as good as dead. (Go with me, it’s not quite that gloomy over here…) The Amplified translation renders it as a ‘solemn rest.’ The land is, to all intents and purposes, a glorified temporary graveyard. 

But under the surface, beyond the sight of anyone but God, vast molecular structures rediscover long lost atomic companions in joyous valency, nutrients covertly breed and spread osmotically in fertile, all conquering legions of replenishing vitality and ever so silently the ground begins to catch its breath, dragging life from the strata below and filling the air with sweet fragrance, as welcome as the rain drops that dash themselves in glittering spectra on soil that is slowly becoming primed and destined to bring forth generous, abundant fruit for the glory of God. 

Death. And resurrection. 

The world view of life and death is typically as two binary forces. They are the start of the computer code; parallel processes that do not and cannot overlap, equal and opposing nemeses that share no quarter and give no ground. Not so, it would appear. The fallow field teaches us that apparent death gives way to abundant life and it soon transpires that this cycle unavoidably echoes across the canyons of the natural world and beyond. 

The twitching cocoon shields us from the miracle of a liquidised lepidopteran reassembling itself into a glorious soaring butterfly. The unborn child leaves the world of the womb into an unimaginable new reality, taking its first tearful gulp of destiny in the arms of the midwife. The wronged, embittered individual decides to forgive and forget, embracing death to entitlement, pride and self-pity to allow for freedom, growth and reconciliation. Closer to home, we can probably recall the moments in life when a season finished, a project closed, an opportunity evaporated and beyond it, a new avenue opened, unforeseen in the initial roadblock of disappointment, confusion and pain and yet inaccessible without it.  

All these designed, of course, to point to the greatest and most triumphant example. Jesus, the way the truth and the very life Himself, chooses death and, for the joy set before Him, endures the cross before rising to new and unimaginable victory. We, His followers, join Him in death through faith and discover the mighty Kingdom to which we truly belong is only accessed through the departure gates of Terminal Self. It’s the kardia of the gospel. As C.S Lewis says, “until you have given up your self to Him you will not have a real self.” Death is the route to life, both here in the minutiae minutes of everyday life and beyond into the airless mountains of endless time.  

It’s been over two months now in my fallow field. Life has slowed and simplified. The gyroscopes have stopped spinning. I pull purple velvet peas from the plants and quietly water the runner beans. I didn’t realise how stressed I was until the quiet rhythms of rest massaged the mental knots and kinks into mobile tissue again. I’ve tried to embrace the obscurity with intermittent success and to breathe out loud the dream that such space affords, one that has lay dormant beneath the log pile of busyness and stress for many years. Dare I utter it now? Sat quietly with The Lord in the middle of my fallow field I whisper His whisper by firelight into the void. Time and space have stretched to allow His voice to drift through the cracks of my ambition, my ears unstopped, my heartbeat steady, my mind subdued. Artist, He says. I breathe deep, remembering that where I now sit seemed equally implausible not many moons ago. I look carefully back at the shadow of the log pile, heaped high upon my heart. Create, He says. Luxurious resistance against the insatiable narrative of the profit margin and the bottom line. Am I really allowed to entertain such lambent radicalism? Surely this is wishful, starlit indulgence? There’s a lot of dry logs in this pile to fuel that fire though. And I now have time and strength to handle them. I watch as the oak and birch, dismembered and smouldering, slowly crumble to ash and I scoop the warm pale grey embers with trembling hands. Fertiliser for this fallow ground. Life from death is happening whether I control it or not. 

Anything else I should know God? 

Silence. 

Live, He says.