Sunday, January 19, 2025
Second Sunday in Ordinary Time
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Winnie
The Lord delights in you and makes your land his spouse. As a bridegroom rejoices over his bride, so will your God rejoice over you.
Steve Garnaas-Holmes wrote about this God of ours, “Nothing is absolute but God, who is always present and mostly paradox.” Driving in Austin I remember this, as cars weave in and out of traffic, as our grandkids sit up in their car seats, trusting. Trusting me? Trusting this car, which runs well but might not at any moment? They don’t have a name for what they trust, but they are learning to call him Jesus. Christ covers us all with presence and … paradox.
Because we just don’t know what might happen next in our world of anything but absolutes. All we know is that God promises his presence and eternal protection. What happens in the next moment will be part of that eternity, but that’s easy for me to forget.
Doesn’t matter if I forget, though. God does not forget his promises. So if an accident occurs, if my body fails me, if the “unthinkable happens,” God is right there with open arms, welcoming his lost lamb.
Margaret read to the kids and then we listened to the beginning of Pinocchio on the way to the Travis County Expo Center and a citywide farm show for the high school FFA chapters in Austin. These Future Farmers of America brought their pigs, goats and cattle to a mid-January judging and auction after caring for their loved ones since summer. Our friend’s daughter Kenadie got her Hampshire gilt when the pig weighed about thirty pounds. Now Winnie weighs 280 pounds, and she’s ready for market.
Kenadie combs her pig’s black and white skin. She brushes her all over, back and forth, back and forth. Winnie snuffles in delight. Kenadie sits on the shavings and her 280 pound Hampshire hog nestles up beside her. Kenadie smiles wide enough for both of them, happy to introduce her friend to Miles and Jasper and their grandparents.
Margaret and I remember nights, often cold nights, in Lincoln when our own sows were giving birth, one at a time to 8 or 10 pigs like Winnie, as the mama lay in the straw. I can imagine the next phase for Kennedy, caring for Winnie as she grunts, lays down, and begins to push out her babies.
Not this time, not now, not in the middle of Pfluegerville, Texas … but maybe someday. “Do you want to move up into the Future and become a Farmer of America?” Of course, she exclaims! She laughs and is filled with that hope, that unfinished plan, and we all hope with her. Texas needs some women who tend livestock and leave the kitchen to their men.
The Lord shall call you by a new name. You shall be a glorious crown in the hand of Lord, a royal diadem held by your God.
The wind blew through the barn and the boys shivered. They didn’t like the smell of the poop, of which there was very little because these high school kids worked hard to keep the poop in the bin, not on the ground. We walked over to see the cattle, and really see the difference between a bull and a heifer. It was time to go. We headed south.
(to be continued)
(Isaiah 62, Psalm 96, 1 Corinthians 12, 2 Thessalonians 2, John 2)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
#Win
