Wednesday, October 21, 2020          (today’s lectionary)
Tis a gift
Just an hour from home yesterday we stopped at our Amish farmer friend’s barn to get a couple gallons of A2 enzyme milk. We talked awhile with our friend Willis. His brother died just a few weeks ago, sixty-three days after his cancer diagnosis. Willis is a preacher as well as farmer, but I doubt if he preached his brother’s funeral. Even now his emotions are raw.
The mystery of Christ was not made known to human beings in other generations as it has now been revealed. Now we can preach of the inscrutable riches of Christ and bring to light for everyone the plan of the mystery hidden from ages past.
His brother didn’t go to the hospital for even one day. His diagnosis was Stage 4 melanoma, and he saw no reason to undergo chemotherapy. The growth on his scalp near his right ear started small but became large like two fists by the end. The cancer invaded his brain, lungs and bones. So his grown kids came and cared for him day and night, along with his wife, while he waited at home to die.
“I wouldn’t wish him back, but I miss him like there is a hole in my heart,” Willis said.
Draw water with joy at the fountain of salvation. Great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel.
Willis works hard, along with his whole family, and I am sure his brother worked hard too. Behind the milk barn the family’s extra business of sanding, staining and finishing various kinds of wood for furniture craftsmen continued while we talked. His daughters and sons work the wood. One of them was digging with a small backhoe in the farm lot. There is always so much going on, so much to do. Although we eat her butter and her cheese, we rarely see his wife, who is probably the most gregarious of them all.
So as always, we were left with the impression of a family which works with what God gives, buoyed by their community and their church. They are satisfied by the work, satisfied by the simple food they eat, and satisfied with their prayers. The fruit of the Spirit flows through their pastures and their plains, through their barns, and at last into their home. None of this will change in the midst of their grief. Morning and night, the cows still need to be milked.
The manifold wisdom of God can now be known through the Church even to the principalities and authorities in the heavens. Our Father accomplished this through Christ Jesus our Lord, in whom we have boldness of speech and confidence of access through faith in him.
I know how easy it is to idolize men and women who live their lives well. We don’t choose to live like the Amish, but we admire their ways and are drawn to the world they have made for themselves, or rather that they have preserved for themselves. How do they do it? Well, again, this is too simple, but I think it’s because they pray, and then they do what God tells them to do.
The community holds individuals accountable to the group. Aren’t all communities sort of like that? The values of this community are biblical and fair, and everything in their lives is tempered with patience, waiting for … God knows when, God knows what …
Jesus warned his disciples, “At an hour you do not expect, the Son of Man will come.”
We all know men and women like Willis. (And lots who are not like him.) I pulled his long gray beard a couple of times yesterday (in some vague context, of course), and he didn’t seem to mind. A deep sense of humor is always close to his earnest surface.
Much will be required of the person entrusted with much. And still more will be demanded of the person entrusted with more.
As we left another customer came in, the sheriff of a nearby county whose wife could not drink milk at all until she tried that good A2 enzyme milk that comes from Willis’ cows. Two more folks who appreciate him and all he does.
(Ephesians 3, Isaiah 12, Matthew 24, Luke 12)
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