Friday, July 21, 2023
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
O my, it’s dry!
Slaughter a year old male lamb or goat, one without blemish, during the evening twilight. Apply its blood to the lintel and doorposts of every house. Eat its roasted flesh with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. Eat like those who are in flight, with sandals on your feet, with girded loins, and with your staff in hand. It is the Passover of the Lord.
The breadbasket of the nation is undergoing a long summer drought. Corn, wheat, soybeans, and milo are suffering. Farmers realize once again how quickly their hard work can be destroyed by weather, sometimes in a day, sometimes quietly, over a season, as nothing seems to work out quite right.
Driving through Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri and Illinois, the fields look fine from the road. But they don’t look so fine inside, walking down the rows, looking at the results of dry day after dry day. The USDA Crop Progress reports are not exactly prime time fun reading for farmers right now, because there is nothing they can do. The climate seems to be turning against the farmers whose land has until now been the best cropland in the world.
Jesus was going through a field of grain on the sabbath. His disciples were hungry and began to pick the heads of grain and eat them. Speaking to Pharisees who saw them, Jesus said, “The sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath. Thus the Son of Man is Lord, even of the sabbath.”
It’s very easy for me, at a distance, to either be too calm or too panicked about all of this. My brother John, who is up against it and must look at his fields of corn and soybeans every day, will have another perspective, at the same time both more personal and more patient. He’s used to this stuff. And he rarely reads the headlines, because they make everything sound much better or much worse than it really is. Therefore he can weather this storm, as he has weathered many storms before. (I wish there would be a storm!) His sense of humor and faith in God allows him to rest, care for his family, and when the weather is right, get back to work.
How shall I make a return to the Lord for all the good he has done for me?
Dad had five-buckle boots which he wore working with his cattle. He wore them in the mud, and he wore them in the dust. He had no reason to change them, because in no time the dust would turn to mud, and mud would turn back to dust. When he finished with the cows, he took them off and had breakfast. In the mornings he often pushed his weed mower through the fencerows along the electric fences that kept in the cows. There wasn’t any protection on that mower, but he was never hurt.
How precious in the eyes of the Lord is the death of his faithful ones. We are your servants, you will loose our bonds.
Mom and Dad’s ancestors were German, not Jewish. They knew their bibles, Old Testament and New. Dad’s faith saw him through many droughts. When he died on Thanksgiving Day, 2002, we remembered his request, that Margaret and I sing “I’ll Fly Away” at his funeral. We practiced, we wept, we practiced, we wept. We sang. As the wedding vow goes, “with all that we were, and with all that we had, we honored him.”
Eat like those who are in flight, with sandals on your feet, with girded loins, and with your staff in hand. It is the Passover of the Lord.
(Exodus 11-12, Psalm 116, John 10, Matthew 12)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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