I have been blessed to spend a few precious days at the Wagner farm this Fall helping with harvest. The soybeans ran well and were relatively easy to combine, but the corn, on the other hand, as a result of the severe winds of that Sunday in September, the corn has been a challenge. Every corn field on our farm was affected to various degrees: some stalks were slightly bent to severely bent from the force of the wind, others were/are nearly flat on the ground. Corn harvest has been slow and tedious, yet highly productive. Even given the wind damage, the corn crop is running very well . . . which got me to thinking.
From the road, many of our corn fields might be considered a disaster by those unacquainted with what plants and modern genetics have the capacity to accomplish. Soon after the winds of the storm blew through, I was one of the skeptics who voiced concern what those ‘flattened fields’ would ever be able to yield. Yet, though haltingly harvested, today those wind whipped fields are bringing forth yields which are baffling to even the most seasoned of farmers. God is proving a point: There is something good which can come from Nazareth.
From the poverty of hard labor and slim returns, from the lives of a lowly maiden and a humble carpenter, from the hard-crusted community of an ethnically persecuted people, from the fields of peoples livelihoods laid low by the fickle winds of oppression and politics, God introduces an unexpected and bountiful response to the cynicism of this world’s experts and leadership. There, in the small village of Bethlehem, God speaks a new word of Hope into a despairing attitude. There in the darkened skies above the world’s fields of fear and hurt, God’s angels sing of Courage and Healing, born in abundance in a place of little notice. There along the byways of passing privilege and power, in the heart of flattened dreams and crushed anticipation, God births New Vision and Realized Presence in the unexpected yield of a Holy Baby where no-one, no-one expected any good to emerge.
Is it any wonder that the shepherds were the first ones to hear and take notice? Should it surprise either you or me that, while darkness covered the land and deep darkness the hearts of the people, God placed a magnificent star above the Savior’s birthplace, boldly proclaiming a Mercy never before known, a Grace riding on the waves of gossamer angel songs, piercing the prevailing winds of withering drought and disease with Light above Light, an Answer to Prayer? Have we become so accustomed to hearing the Story of God elevating the Harvest in the planting of the Son, that our own expectations of anything being made different this year in His coming are little higher than the flattest corn? Our lives little more than rote holiday behaviors exercised on an annual basis in the hopes that others might not notice the lack of depth in our soul?
“Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight,” says John the baptizer in the Gospel of Mark.
Today is an incredibly wonderful day to see with God’s eyes the potential in those flattened places of our lives. Today is an opportune time to consider with God’s heart the abundant yield that waits to be harvested in those surprising places. Today is an excellent day to ‘Prepare the way of the Lord’, prayerfully expectant of God to bring forth from the birth waters of struggle new Truth, new Life, and new Faith.
I pray you and yours a blessed and bountifully powerful Advent and Christmas. God is entering into the lives of those who are ready and, through the birth of God’s Son, Jesus, the storm’s devastations are rendered new meaning. Come, see the Son, and there find Life Abundant.
From the road, many of our corn fields might be considered a disaster by those unacquainted with what plants and modern genetics have the capacity to accomplish. Soon after the winds of the storm blew through, I was one of the skeptics who voiced concern what those ‘flattened fields’ would ever be able to yield. Yet, though haltingly harvested, today those wind whipped fields are bringing forth yields which are baffling to even the most seasoned of farmers. God is proving a point: There is something good which can come from Nazareth.
From the poverty of hard labor and slim returns, from the lives of a lowly maiden and a humble carpenter, from the hard-crusted community of an ethnically persecuted people, from the fields of peoples livelihoods laid low by the fickle winds of oppression and politics, God introduces an unexpected and bountiful response to the cynicism of this world’s experts and leadership. There, in the small village of Bethlehem, God speaks a new word of Hope into a despairing attitude. There in the darkened skies above the world’s fields of fear and hurt, God’s angels sing of Courage and Healing, born in abundance in a place of little notice. There along the byways of passing privilege and power, in the heart of flattened dreams and crushed anticipation, God births New Vision and Realized Presence in the unexpected yield of a Holy Baby where no-one, no-one expected any good to emerge.
Is it any wonder that the shepherds were the first ones to hear and take notice? Should it surprise either you or me that, while darkness covered the land and deep darkness the hearts of the people, God placed a magnificent star above the Savior’s birthplace, boldly proclaiming a Mercy never before known, a Grace riding on the waves of gossamer angel songs, piercing the prevailing winds of withering drought and disease with Light above Light, an Answer to Prayer? Have we become so accustomed to hearing the Story of God elevating the Harvest in the planting of the Son, that our own expectations of anything being made different this year in His coming are little higher than the flattest corn? Our lives little more than rote holiday behaviors exercised on an annual basis in the hopes that others might not notice the lack of depth in our soul?
“Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight,” says John the baptizer in the Gospel of Mark.
Today is an incredibly wonderful day to see with God’s eyes the potential in those flattened places of our lives. Today is an opportune time to consider with God’s heart the abundant yield that waits to be harvested in those surprising places. Today is an excellent day to ‘Prepare the way of the Lord’, prayerfully expectant of God to bring forth from the birth waters of struggle new Truth, new Life, and new Faith.
I pray you and yours a blessed and bountifully powerful Advent and Christmas. God is entering into the lives of those who are ready and, through the birth of God’s Son, Jesus, the storm’s devastations are rendered new meaning. Come, see the Son, and there find Life Abundant.
Your servant in Christ,
Pastor Don
