Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time, February 15, 2026
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Growing up a Sandel
Blessed are they who follow the law of the Lord!
Blessed are they whose way is blameless,
who walk in the law of the LORD.
Blessed are they who observe his decrees,
who seek him with all their heart.
I was a little boy, living on a dairy farm. My dad Roland would have liked nothing more than a firstborn son excited about becoming a dairy farmer. He gave up his promising accounting career to buy dairy cattle and partner-up with his own dad and younger brother, Merlie, near where they all were born in Lincoln, Illinois.
Dad decided his call, career and purpose was to farm and farm some more, as he had grown up doing before traveling to the Philippines with the Army Signal Corps in World War II. Using the GI Bill he graduated with high grades from the University of Illinois’ prestigious accounting school. He married Angelina Brummer, a school teacher who graduated along with Dad in 1948 from the U of I. She also came from Lincoln, but together they set off for Lawrenceville in southern Illinois. Dad began his career with Wabash Valley Farm Supply (FS). Mom got pregnant, came back to Lincoln to have the baby (that would be me), and Grandpa Sandel had a talk with Dad.
“Maybe you’d like to do some farming before you get too far along down south,” he might have said. “I can help you out.” So Dad thought about that for a year or so, and then Mom and Dad decided to come back home.
You have commanded that your precepts
be diligently kept.
Oh, that I might be firm in the ways
of keeping your statutes!
Blessed are they who follow the law of the Lord!
Be good to your servant, that I may live
and keep your words.
Open my eyes, that I may consider
the wonders of your law.
Surely they were both happy to return home. But Dad’s ideas about my education were so different from Mom’s. Her father Herman read his daughter Charles and Mary Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare before she went to school. Dad’s father William woke him up to help milk before he went to school. Both Mom and Dad were first born children. Dad’s younger brother Merlie both worked hard as farm kids – milking cows, planting corn, weeding beans, cutting weeds while his two sisters became registered nurses.
Mom’s sister Mary Lou was a writer, musician, missionary and scholar, exploring every corner of her world, and both the Brummer girls became schoolteachers. Mom taught me to read when I was four. Roland and Merlie left the army and navy after WWII to eventually buy Holstein dairy cows, rent land, and milk them twice a day, every day.
In our Empty Nesters Sunday School class one day we sat around our tables and thought about how and by whom we were “guided” as children. I described the friction between Mom and Dad, especially when they pushed their own goals for us three kids. Both of our parents were highly intelligent, both rose above standards set for them by their own parents, but Dad wanted me to farm and Mom wanted me to read. I did both, but it was always easier to stay inside where it was warm when the weather was cold outside.
I appreciate so many parts of their “guidance,” but perhaps what I appreciate the most is how they guided me out of their embrace. I hated it when they fought over me, over my activities, my chores, my responsibilities.
And so I kind of just went my own way. It was easy to become a mediator, a peacemaker, a counselor, and eventually a Christian therapist and pastor. Seeing both sides has been my job ever since I can remember.
As the deer pants for living waters,
 so my soul longs for you, O God.
Where shall I go and behold the face of God?
(Sirach 15, Psalm 119, 1 Corinthians 2, Matthew 11, Matthew 5)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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