In the context of Wheat Fields, discuss the Spiritual significance of the Wheat as a subject.
As a young man Van Gogh pursued what he saw as a religious calling, wanting to minister to working people.  In 1876 he was assigned a post in Isleworth, England to teach Bible classes and occasionally preach in the Methodist church.When he returned to the Netherlands he studied for the ministry and also for lay ministry or missionary work without finishing either field of study.  With support from his father, Van Gogh went to Borinage in southern Belgium where he nursed and ministered to coal miners.  There he obtained a six-month trial position for a small salary where he preached in an old dance hall and established and taught Bible school. His self-imposed zeal and asceticism cost him the position.After a nine-month period of withdrawal from society and family; he rejected the church establishment, yet found his personal vision of spirituality, "The best way to know God is to love many things.  Love a friend, a wife, something – whatever you like – (and) you will be on the way to knowing more about Him; this is what I say to myself. But one must love with a lofty and serious intimate sympathy, with strength, with intelligence."  By 1879, he made a shift in the direction of his life and found he could express his "love of God and man" through painting.Drawn to Biblical parables, Van Gogh found wheat fields metaphors for humanity's cycles of life, as both celebrations of growth and realization of the susceptibility of nature's powerful forces.
Of the Biblical symbolism of sowing and reaping Van Gogh taught in his Bible lessons: "One does not expect to get from life what one has already learned it cannot give; rather, one begins to see more clearly that life is a kind of sowing time, and the harvest is not here."
The image of the sower came to Van Gogh in Biblical teachings from his childhood, such as:"A sower went out to sow. As he sowed, some seed fell along the path, and the birds came and devoured it.  Other seed fell on rocky ground, where it had not much soil, and immediately it sprang up, since it had no depth of soil; and when the sun rose it was scorched, and since it had no root it withered away.  Other seed fell among thorns and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no grain.  And other seeds fell into good soil and brought forth grain, growing up and increasing and yielding thirty fold, and sixty fold and a hundredfold.Van Gogh used the digger and ploughman as symbols of struggle to reach the kingdom of God.
He was particularly enamored with "the good God sun" and called anyone who didn't believe in the sun infidels.  The painting of the haloed sun was a characteristic style seen in many of his paintings, representing the divine, in reference to the nimbus in Delacroix's Christ Asleep During the Tempest.
Van Gogh found storms important for their restorative nature, symbolizing "the better times of pure air and the rejuvenation of all society."  Van Gogh also found storms to reveal the divine.
Bible God spirituality Methodist England missionary asceticism Delacroix's Belgium Isleworth nimbus lay ministry plough ministry Borinage divine Netherlands