Farming Faith

When the rains do not fall and the hay crop suffers and the pecan crop is diminished, there is the expected moaning and groaning about the weather.  And when the market prices are down at the cattle sale and there are cows to sell, I have learned to fuss with the best of them.  But, what I also know is that at the end of the day it is dffierent for me and the real farmers whose livelihood depends on so many things which are beyond the control of the farmer.  I am not going to have to sell the farm if prices are down while some of the farmers around me could find themselves in that kind of dire predicament.  

I have come to a deeper appreciation for the real farmers around here who put seed in the ground not knowing if a harvest will be made, or who know that there are a thousand things from drought to army worms which might destroy their crop and their income for the next year.   They may not speak of it in their ordinary conversations around the back of some parked pick up truck at the end of the day, but they model a kind of faith that is both willing to take a risk and also full of hopeful expectations.  Their example is a good model for the rest of us to understand that faith truly does call us to abandon ourselves to the unknown and to live knowing that in the final analysis very little is inside our control.  

We have a watered down definition which we have learned in religious circles that has turned faith into a warm feeling known mostly when God is doing all the things we need Him to do.  "God is good, all the time," it is glibly said.  The farmer knows that not all times are good, but come the next year the seed will once again be cast into the ground.  All our times are not going to be good.  To expect them to be otherwise is to live as a fool.  Some times are good and some are bad and faith calls us to take the same risk and to live with same hope in both the good and the bad times.