Sunday Sowing

Desire Koami Gbedjangni, Togo, West Africa

Illustration by Richard Mia

A few years ago, just before Easter weekend, it rained all week long. I had been in Benin, West Africa, but was coming home to spend Easter in Togo. It didn’t rain on Saturday, the day I arrived, but that night it began raining again.

I knew that church started at 9:00 a.m. on Sunday, but because it had been raining so much and I’d only just arrived, I decided that was too early for me.

I thought to myself, “I’ll go a little bit late to church and get there at 10:00 a.m.” Then I went to see my brother. “Instead of going to church at 9:00,” I told him, “let’s go over to that patch of land on the side of my house.”

When we arrived, we noticed that the ground was nice and wet from all the rain. I thought, “It’s Sunday, and we’re waiting until 10:00 to go to church. Why not plant some beans before we go?”

So my brother and I planted a little patch of land that was about 65 square feet (6 m2). Then we went to church, an hour late. The next day we went to a nearby town where I had another plot of land. There we planted corn and more beans.

Two months later when I returned home again, I went to check that little patch of land next to my house. It was empty except for a little clump of weeds that I tripped over as I walked into the field. “Oh, yeah,” I said to myself, “we planted beans here on Easter Sunday!”

Out of all the seeds we sowed, the only thing that grew was a clump of weeds. The beans and corn we planted in the other field the Monday after Easter, however, grew just fine. Since that time everything we have planted in the patch of land next to my house has grown normally.

I hadn’t kept the Sabbath day holy that Easter Sunday, and I tripped over a clump of weeds to remind me that I hadn’t. Since then, I have remembered that I can’t just do whatever I feel like doing on the Lord’s day. Instead, I always remember to keep the Sabbath day holy.