Tuesday, October 20, 2020 (today’s lectionary)
Access
Driving north today the clouds thickened and rain fell, first warm but then chilly as we passed out of Texas, through Arkansas and into Missouri. More and more cotton fields awaited harvest, giant white bolls everywhere covering brown vines. Will the rain hurt such delicate plants?
The Lord himself gives his benefits, and our land shall yield its increase.
I realize how little I know about farming anything but corn, alfalfa and soybeans. Cotton is a mystery. And while I never picture anything but a combine harvesting corn or beans, I can’t get the image out of my mind of a sharecropper or slave with a bag over their shoulder in the cotton field. And they are singing.
After many years my dad got a cab for his combine. It protected us from weather and dust, and best of all it came with a radio. We listened to hours of Christian preaching up there above the beans. Chuck Swindoll, Jack Hayford, Steve Brown, Seed for the Sower, and the Pacific Garden Mission Radio Hour curled through the airwaves into our tired ears.
We heard choirs and organs, banjos and mountain dulcimers play music rarely heard in our Missouri Synod Lutheran church. “Turn Your Radio On and listen to the music in the air … get in touch with God, turn your radio on.” The Statler Brothers, all the way from Memphis, rode with us from dawn till dark.
Be vigilant at all times and pray for strength to stay awake even into the last hours of the night, waiting for our master’s return.
I love driving at night when the highway is empty and a bright moon can almost light the way. The contentment I feel now must have its roots in the peace that my brother, Dad and I felt at the end of a long harvest day. We were dirty and dusty, satisfied by hard and fruitful work, and filled up by hour after hour of messages and melodies from God’s people.
He is our peace. He came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. Through Christ Jesus we have access in one Spirit to the Father.
There is great rejoicing among all generations at this access we are given. We joined this cloud of witnesses simply by showing up and turning the dial. God works in mysterious ways. The seed is watered and multiplies, then the ground lies dark through winter until it is ready for new seed once again in spring. This rhythm applies not only to corn and beans and cotton fields. It applies to me.
We are no longer strangers far from home. Now we are fellow citizens with the holy ones and members of the household of God. This community is held together by Christ Jesus, and in Jesus we are being built together into a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.
I’m 70, and next month I’ll be 71. During Dad’s last years he did less physical work and read the Bible more. His hands softened a bit, but they still seemed hard and strong to me. We took several trips together, just the two of us. I wanted to take those trips so we could have some time to get to know each other, to talk, and even sometimes to pray. We went to Billy Graham’s retreat center and to a conference for charismatic Lutherans. We went to a bluegrass weekend and to Old World Wisconsin, where we saw how those Norwegians used to roast a pig. Dad and I went with Chris and Marc to see the Passion Play in Eureka Springs, Arkansas.
Kindness and truth shall meet. Justice and peace shall kiss. Truth shall spring up from the earth and justice will look down from heaven.
Dad died on the Thanksgiving after his 80th birthday, old and full of years, as the Bible says. Over those years of his one particular life, God answered the prayer Dad said he often prayed from the end of Psalm 90.
May the favor of the Lord our God rest on us and establish the work of our hands for us. Yes, Lord, establish the work of our hands.
