I can remember trying to sleep on a hot summer's night, wondering when the headlights of the farmer's combine would stop jumping across the walls of my room. He drove 'round and 'round that field of wheat all night long, and from my 12-year-old vantage point on our little 2-acre farm, it was hard to wrap my brain around the hundreds of acres the farmer worked year-round. Stranger still was the idea that he would drive through the night to ensure a successful harvest.
My adult self still marvels at the many hands and hard work it takes to tend the fields that dot our community. Work that begins months before bales are tucked away in a barn. Burning, fertilizing, pump repair, ditch cleaning, pipe moving, prayers for enough water, rodent chasing, broken baler fixing, tractor borrowing, windrowing, harrow bed loaning. Then hoping for buyers, and the list goes on. It's a full-time, all-the-time job that no one does alone. And I'm in awe.
In light of the recent events around the globe where human beings are teased, trafficked and targeted, I'm mindful of the unique place on the map that we all get to call home; this rural county that sits relatively isolated from the evils wreaking havoc in other parts. So, I'm asking, how do we, like the farmer, tend to each other and our beloved community? What does it look like to care for humans the way farmers tend to a herd or crop? Humanity is not made of Teflon, yet we wield harsh words and deeds towards one another as if the tender souls within don't feel the swipes.
Perhaps you are thinking about these things, too; about what paradigms define your world and how people, who are all precious in God's sight, fit into that belief system? While realizing that no community is exempt from the suffering we watch on the news. Hate can gain a foothold anywhere that love doesn't abide. And if you think, somehow, we are immune because of our location or demographics, think again. Humanity has an innate capacity to hurt itself, period.
We may live in wide-open, fertile spaces, but simply being good stewards of land and cattle is not enough to keep the darkness at bay. We also have to tend to the people in our lives with as much goodwill, if not more -- this means staying connected in the most basic ways to keep the fields of our minds free from varmints of twisted thinking and isolation. Kindness breeds kindness and has a way of burning away the chaff that shame and feelings of inadequacy leave behind (and, if we are human, we've all felt those things). So, opening the headgates of our humanity to allow some tears to flow for our fellow man wouldn't be a bad start, even for the hardest of hearts. And most of all, bended knees can work the ground in unseen ways, making crooked paths straight and bringing light to dark places as we pray for peace at home and far away.
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