Saturday, March 22, 2025
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Brothers and sister
A man had two sons.
So here we are, 70ish years in, brothers and a sister still sharing hopes and dreams, along with memories of a supportive, generous, comfortable Missouri Synod Lutheran family in the center of black loam Illinois, where Mom taught school and Dad put his accounting degree to use in the winter, and all year long farmed corn, soybeans, oats and alfalfa to feed his herd of 40 Holsteins. Those Holsteins provided milk for hundreds of families around the area and won prizes month after month for their milk’s quality.
Not that the cows knew they were special, but they were. Logan County Milk Producers presented plaques and certificates and the Lincoln Courier printed an article each month with statistics and praise. Dad shared top honors with another nearby farmer almost every month.
The younger son collected all his belongings and set off to a distant country where he squandered his inheritance on a life of dissipation.
Actually, the older son is the one who left, taking a decade to return appreciating what he had left. That would be me. In the meantime Dad sold his herd of dairy cows. He hoped I would want to farm, but I read books and explored every corner of the world I could get to. So one day when I was 16 he set up an auction and dairy farmers from all around came to inspect, bid on and buy his cows. Dad named them, when he could, after the former owner’s wife. One of the sellers was single, so Dad named that cow John, after the seller himself.
The son who left home found himself in dire need. So he hired himself out to one of the local citizens who sent him to his farm to tend the swine.
My brother is also named John. Seven years younger, John stayed on the farm, got married and continues to live just down the road. He farmed with Dad until Dad passed away in 2002. They built a beautiful herd of Charolais cattle, a white French breed that makes for great steaks, traveling to Missouri and Wisconsin to buy calves, which they fed to grown beef cattle. John’s enthusiasm for farming hasn’t waned. Now my sister Mary Kay and I join him as co-owners of the 240 acres, looking to our brother for advice about the world of corn, soybeans and livestock.
Now the older (in our case younger) son had been out in the field and, on his way back, as he neared the house, he heard the sound of music and dancing. He called one of the servants and asked what this might mean. The servant said to him, “Your brother has returned and your father has slaughtered the fattened calf because he has him back safe and sound.”
Now of course the parallels to Jesus’ parable are limited, but we siblings do watch each other, wondering what will happen next. In our case I was welcomed from my wandering by everyone, including my brother and sister. But there are many families without that kind of connection, where a farmer son might feel bondage rather than bonding, and a renegade son returning might generate resentment and anger.
My father and mother didn’t choose favorites. All their kids had strengths and weaknesses, as did they. Many years later, Dad and I took our annual father-son trip, this time to the Billy Graham Center in Asheville. Dad apologized to me for not helping me more during the year I did choose farming as a vocation (until the land I rented was sold to someone else). He modeled a generosity of spirit and substance for all of us. I can imagine him saying something to John as the prodigal father told his son:
My son, you are here with me always; everything I have is yours. But now we must celebrate and rejoice, because your brother was dead and has come to life again; he was lost and has been found.
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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