The Farmer and the Grain: A Parable of Patience

The Master, the listeners record, used many agricultural parables in His talks. The believers and inquirers who came to Him in ‘Akká were drawn from many backgrounds, but the great majority of them — Persian, Syrian, Egyptian, even the Western visitors — knew the country and the field. He met them where they were.

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One of the parables, several recorders preserved, was the story of an impatient farmer. The farmer, the Master would say, had prepared his land; he had ploughed; he had sowed his seed; he had irrigated the rows. He went home that evening pleased with his day’s work. He slept poorly, however, because his impatience for the harvest was already at work in him.

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In the morning he could not contain himself. He went out to the field with a small spade. He bent over the first row and dug gently into the earth. He found the seed. The seed had begun, in the night, to swell; a small white root was visible on its underside; the tip was preparing to break the husk. The farmer examined the seed with pleasure. Then he placed it back in the soil and went to the next row.

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By the end of the morning he had inspected most of his rows. He had been gentle; he had not crushed the seeds; he had simply satisfied himself that they were doing what seeds do. He went home pleased.

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A week later there was no harvest. The seeds had stopped growing. The farmer had not understood that the work of the seed is done in the dark, and that the spade that interrupts the dark — even a spade as gentle and well-meaning as his — ends the work it has come to inspect.

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The Master would offer the parable, the listeners record, to believers who were impatient about their own spiritual progress or about the progress of their children, their teaching work, or the Cause itself. Many things, He would say, must work in the dark. The constant inspection of the soul’s progress, the constant turning-over of the inward soil to see whether anything has yet sprouted, ends the very work it pretends to encourage.

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He would close, in some versions, with a quiet counsel. *Sow, water, and wait.* The harvest, in its own season, will come. The work of the soul, like the work of the field, requires the discipline of leaving certain things alone.

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*Paraphrased from Stories Told by 'Abdu'l-Bahá (Bahá'í Publishing Trust, 2000); see original for full text.*

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