June 5, 2014 by Sam Lake
Hey there friends,
On one particular day last week, we spent a good portion of the morning planting bean seeds into several rows at our Grow Center on Pine Ave. It was a long day of seeding with most of the morning spent down on the ground sweetly pressing each seed slightly into the earth only inches apart. It was here in this moment with the beans that I began to realize something.
For three weeks now I have been working on the farm. It seems that each day, although similar in many ways, brings a variety of tasks to accomplish. We seed, we transplant, we shovel, we compost, we weed, we water, and we build. What I have noticed about these different tasks, what planting the beans has shown me, and what I am coming to understand more about the whole of farming, is that a farmer is forced into a position of humility. Obviously farming is a humble pursuit in that is not the most lucrative of careers, but even more than that, caring for the earth puts your physical being in a humble position.
On most days, for long parts of the day, I find myself down on my hands and knees. Farming does not encourage majestic poses or a posture of superiority, in fact the opposite is true. More often than not in order to weed, transplant, harvest, and accomplish other tasks, you must lower yourself. This may seem obvious to some but what is interesting for me is what that physical posture means. The miracle here is that it is through your supplication that life is brought forward, that growth can occur. Those beans that we all love to eat so much would never grow and bear fruit and we had not lowered ourselves to the earth.
James 4:10 says, “Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and He will lift you up.” I love this picture we are given. In life too then, it is not through our power, might or majesty, that we see growth. But in our humility, the humility it takes to take on the enormous task of working with the earth, we are lifted, we are grown, we are made holy like our Father is holy. Scripture also says that, “The Lord opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” (Proverbs 3:32 ESV) Humility seems to be the only option as I have already seen that we could certainly use all the grace we can get here on the farm! May the food we eat be lifted from the ground only through the humility our humble hands before the Lord.
Thanks for reading brothers and sisters
Peace,
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