If God Is This Winter Wheat

If God is this winter wheat
whose seed slept
under snow just months ago
awaiting still another awakening,
and now stands raised yet deep-rooted
on heads-up stalks
billowing in the wind
like the sea
that once labored here;

If God is this winter wheat
flooding these plains
and rolling away from me
as far as I can see
even to that distance only
seen beyond sight,
that further view of faith;

If God is this winter wheat
I wave and beckon
into the fields threshers
arriving to harvest our God
whose body will be broken
to become bread of life
for the bellies of her world
even as some of us
eat her bitter chaff
to fuel our souls.

WARREN L. MOLTON is director of the Counseling Center for Human Development Inc. and a member of St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Kansas City, Missouri.