Christian Counseling Service -- Devotions

Behind the barn

Saturday, March 30, 2019

From Luke 18
The tax collector stood off at a distance and would not even raise his eyes to heaven but beat his breast and prayed, 'O God, be merciful to me a sinner.'

A few miles west of the farm, Lincoln's capitol building rises above the town. I pushed the manure bucket on its rails out toward the fields and watched November's sun fall below the dome.

I wore my buckled rubber boots and yellow cotton gloves. The old blue coat, never quite clean, buttoned up to my chin. A train whistled by a quarter mile south. I wanted to be anywhere but here.

My resentment wasn't deep. On the barn's red brick wall, I painted the outline of a strike zone. I had a good leather glove, and a decent baseball, which bounced right back to me. Sometimes I could ride my bike to town and back. I traded baseball cards with Larry Poffenbarger, who lived a mile south. Mom helped start a Cub Scout pack, and I was in it.

My parents bought a World Book Encyclopedia, and I read the articles on astronomy. I bought The Complete Sherlock Holmes at Purcell's Book Store. I learned later that my parents bought books there too, when they were kids.

Inside the cover, I expanded my address:

David Sandel
R. R. #2
Lincoln, Illinois
United States of America
North America
The Northern Hemisphere
Earth
The Solar System
Milky Way Galaxy
The Universe
God's Hand

Our barn stayed warm in winter. Dad's Holsteins, 15 or 20 at a time, ate ground corn and waited to be milked. You could see their breath in the air. We spread out bales of straw with pitchforks, and on the coldest nights, the cows stayed inside. They were never in a hurry. Their noses always wet, their eyes big and brown, they buckled their knees, laid down in the straw and slept.

I must have tasted humility behind the barn. But I spit it out and refused its transformation. I wanted what I didn't have. I imagined so much world beyond. I felt separated from my friends, who I did not think shoveled much manure. I listened to Lowell Thomas on the fly-specked, once-white radio and ached to be the one who read the news.

Jesus talks of a tax collector beating his breast, knowing his createdness, feeling the depth of his sin, crying out for mercy and forgiveness.

Later, Jesus. Give me time.

He did. He does.

Dad, too, battled silently with what he was and what he thought he could have been. But I am grateful. Both our lives felt rich at last, fertilized by much of what went on inside our big, white barn.

Let us know, let us strive to know the Lord;
as certain as the dawn his coming,
and his judgment shines forth in light of day.
He will come to us like rain,
like spring rain that waters all the earth.
(From Hosea 6)

Devotions Archive

Behind the barn

Saturday, March 30, 2019