Plowing ahead

“So take a new grip with your tired hands and strengthen your weak knees. Mark out a straight path for your feet so that those who are weak and lame will not fall but become strong. Work at living in peace with everyone, and work at living a Holy life. Look after each other so that none of you fails to receive the grace of God. Watch out that no poisonous root of bitterness grows up to trouble you corrupting many”. Hebrews 12:12-15

Whenever spring comes, I think back to rituals of farming. One spring activity is plowing. It is one of those deceptive tasks. It looks relatively easy. Simply jump on the tractor and start driving. However, if you’ve ever experienced plowing, you know this is not true. Look at a field plowed by a novice and their inexperience is fairly obvious. There is really quite an art to plowing and a well-plowed field is a thing of beauty. When plowing, there are a lot of things to consider. You have to make sure the depth is right, your coulter is set, your landing is straight, and that the pitch and yaw of the plow is level. My Dad would set the plow and lay the dead and the header furrows, which he could set amazingly straight. My job was to basically not to screw it up but to continue on, using his furrows as a guide – again, easier said than done.

I could do most of the job, but I had one debilitating factor – a very short attention span –that does not bode well for 8 or more hours of plowing.

I was thinking that many of our tasks as leaders involve ‘marking out paths’ for others to follow. How we establish those paths for others is critical – our goal being to make each path relatively easy follow which in turn not only bolsters inner strength but provides a positive reinforcement to others as they seek to complete their own tasks. At some point while plowing, my mind would wander or I would meet unexpected obstacles – large rocks or tree stumps and it would take me off course. My Dad could see from a distance that things were getting off line – so he would come down and re-lay a few furrows to get things back on track. The ‘how’ he did that was very important. He could have come down on me – chiding me for ‘how many times have you done this?’ or ‘how many times do I have to straighten out your mess?’ – but that wasn’t his style. Instead, he’d jump on the tractor while I was still in drivers seat and put his hand on the wheel and talk me through it until the process was back on track – then he’d return to his own tasks.

Similarly, there’s a lot of ‘work’ involved in building our relationships with one another. We are called to work at ‘living at peace with everyone’. As we look around at one another, intuitively, we know that this takes a lot of work. However, in God’s family, this is not an option – it’s part of our work and responsibility to living a Holy life. A significant part of the challenge is that there are many of us ‘plowing’ in the same field, and it is easy to cross paths and enter into areas of conflict or frustration that can cause the poison of bitterness. So, we must ‘watch out’ and recognize when this is happening and not allow any adversity to take root and corrupt the field’s ability to grow a healthy, yielding harvest.

Reflect on the phrase ‘Look after each other so that none of you fails to receive the grace of God’. This is a powerful thought! We have a significant responsibility to look after one other. Apparently, to God, we are our brother’s and sister’s keeper. We can fail to receive the grace of God because we don’t look after each other.
I challenge you to take time to let this passage penetrate your mind and heart. Let Him speak to you – and don’t be afraid to take a new grip, even though our hands may be tired – He will bring you strength.

Anyway, I was just thinking.