Walking in Harness

The farm which I call home is really a small place compared to the "real" farms all around me.  Most of the farmers around me work their farms as a way of life and the means by which they provide for their families.  While I have been called a "gentleman farmer" by some, I have never really liked that moniker since it seems to imply using the land for pleasure instead of its purpose.  I prefer to speak of the land as a working farm though I am the first to admit that less and less work is going on around here as the years are piling on.  The purpose of land that knows itself as a farm is to produce.  

I have tried over the years of being here to walk in harness with that purpose.  Gardens have been grown.  Fruit trees have been planted.  Chickens and cows have found a home here.  The pecan trees make their own harvest and the open fields grow hay and provide grazing land.  I am the maintenance man who tends and cares for the land.  After sixteen years of being here, I realize that I have been the servant of the land more than the owner.  I have come to understand that it is not I who owns the land, but the land which owns me.  It has become a part of me in a way I never knew was possible.  For all the sweat and sometimes blood invested over the years, it has blessed me with a place I know as home and where my soul belongs. 

In a larger sense whether we live in the open spaces or crowded urban streets, the earth, or the Creation as I prefer to call it, is our home.  Creation is a word which speaks to me more about the creative hand of God than words like earth or nature so I mainly use it as a way of expressing respect and honor to the creating God encountered in the first pages of Genesis.  Regardless of what we see outside our window and regardless of names on deeds, we live in God's Creation and as we do so, it is important that we walk in harness with its purpose.  Its purpose is not found in our desires, but in God's plan.