Faith and Farming

We got quite a bit of rain this morning. We sure do need it. The pastures are short and we had to start feeding the cows hay again. We don't have a lot of hay this year and every bale we feed now will be one we can't feed this winter. Try not to worry though, the Lord has always seen us through. We have been through some pretty lean years and we always seem to find a way to get by. I always take comfort in the fact that if God makes sure the sparrows are fed, He will surely feed his people. I remember years back we had a field that we grew rye straw on with the plan to seed it back to hay in the fall. We ran out of money and couldn't plant it. Now we had 50 acres of good land that we wouldn't get anything off of. Spring came and I didn't even bother to look at it. My dad asked if I'd been up to see the 50 acre lot. I told him I hadn't. He told me to go up and look it over. I pulled in and couldn't believe my eyes. It looked as if we spent a fortune seeding down. No weeds, and the lushest stand of timothy, ellsac and clover you ever saw. We had a hard time getting it all baled up there was so much. I've seen times when we were low on cash and all looked hopeless. Someone would stop in and want to buy a good cow or a bull. All of the sudden we had plenty again. Farming without prayer is like farming without rain or sun, it will never work. When the chips are down, have faith.

I close with the words of C.H. Spurgeon......

Moreover, the farmer is in a very special sense made to see his dependence upon God from season to season. He has never done; his labour is never ending, still beginning; and his hopes are never all fulfilled. From the time he sows the seed to the day when he sees the corn in the ear he is every hour dependent upon the Lord for sunshine and shower; and even when the grain is ready for the garner a stretch of rainy weather will take his harvest from him and leave him mourning at the last. He can never count his profits till he has them in his pocket, and hardly then. This manifest, absolute, and daily dependence should help the good farmer to learn the lesson of faith right thoroughly. He must look up, for where else can he look? He must leave his business in the Lord's hands, for who else can be his helper? Faith which is daily tried, and tried all the day long, has a fair opportunity of becoming unusually strong, and hence our agricultural Christians ought to be the strongest believers in the land. They have not of late been indulged with much temporal prosperity, but our hope is that a succession of adversities may have driven them to set less store by the world, to look more eagerly for the better portion, and to leave all things more believingly in the Lord's hands. This will be good out of evil beyond all question, and such good we ought to look for. Sharp discipline should by this time have made good soldiers of our yeomanry. If it be so, the failing purse is more than recompensed by the enlarged heart: if our farmers are wiser men through their bad seasons, that will be better than being richer men.