Recently my thoughts returned to a lesson on sorrow that the Lord taught me.
"Plant your sorrow." This was what the Lord said to me about six months after my husband's death. I was indignant.
"Lord, I know if you plant corn you get corn. I don't need any more sorrow. Thank you."
Very graciously he explained, "No, this is different. If you'll plant your sorrow I will give you an anointing to heal the broken hearted. You plant a natural seed and it is raised a spiritual seed." Later I realized he was refering to the end of I Corinthians 15.
Not knowing how, but knowing who I agreed.
A few years later the Lord again showed me that sorrow needed to be planted. I was travailing for a friend's unborn baby that the doctors said could not live. I asked him to help me to understand. He showed me a beautiful tree with a growth on the one side.
"What is that?"
Answer: "A planting of the Lord."
I knew somewhere in the Bible I had read that phrase so I searched for it.
In Isaiah 61 we see Jesus's statement from Luke 4 about why he came.
"...to comfort all that mourn..
to give them beauty for ashes,
the oil of joy for mourning,
the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness;
that they might be called trees of righteousness,
the planting of the Lord,
that he might be glorified.
I began to realized that he took our sins and our sorrows when he endured the cross. When we plant our sorrow we are agreeing that he borne our grief and sorrow. (Isaiah 53) We don't have to fake it or do anything. This allows him to raise it (change it) into a spiritual seed.
My friend's baby died a few minutes after birth. A newborn baby miraculously came to them within weeks, and they have raised him for the Lord. When I look at him I think of the growth on the side of the tree I saw. I consider him a handsome planting of the Lord raised from a tree of great sorrow.
