Cultivated
My memories of growing up on our 3 ½ acre “fake” farm run deep. Some of my earliest memories were when my older brother and I would spend our afternoons racing tractors. My dad owned a couple of old crank start Farmall H tractors that he kept parked side by side near the pig pen. The two beasts were nearly identical with the exception of the paint color. One machine held fast to remnants of the original Farmall red, while the other had grayed and rusted from years of neglect. I usually hurried to the red one as everyone knew that was the faster tractor. My older brother reluctantly found himself mounting the Gray Ghost as we called her.
We spent hours racing the tractors and arguing about who won, each of us insisting that we had bested the other.
“I won!”
“No you didn’t!”
“Sure I did!”
“You couldn’t have won, you were on the older clunker!”
This usually went on until mother called us in for supper.
“Boys! Stop playing on those tractors and come in for supper!
“Mom! Tell Ross that I won the race!”
“Well Ryan, considering the fact that those two tractors never moved even an inch during your “races”, I would say that you both won.”
“Or both lost!” my dad interjected.
Perhaps I neglected to emphasize…this was a fake farm…with fake running tractors. Sure the tractors were real, but they had never run in my lifetime. Additionally, being only 6 and 7 years old respectively, me and my brother would never have been able to crank start those machines. Therefore we relied on making our own engine noises. My noises were always faster and better…that is why I won the races.
All of this changed however, on the day that dad brought home a real working tractor. It was a tiny little orange Allis Chalmers B. It was from that day on that our lives changed…for the worse.
Immediately Dad brought my brother and I outside to “work the land.” This mostly meant that Dad insisted that we stand outside and watch him work and stay out of mom’s way. He said something to the effect of, “Boys, come out with me…you mother is losing her mind and she needs to have you guys out of the house.” I assumed that she must have found the pet toad I left in the dresser drawer.
So we stood and watched, as Dad broke the ground with an old single bottom plow. Then we watched some more as he disc harrowed the newly plowed earth. We watched even more as he ran the drag across the newly harrowed ground. Then came the work. He made us walk all over the soft ground picking up all of the rocks that we could find and place them in a pile outside of the prepared area. He then made us shovel manure by hand into wheelbarrows and dump the loads of excrement all over the newly dragged dirt.
Then we stood and watched some more as he harrowed the ground again…and dragged it again.
It was at this point that my brother and I took turns riding on the antique farm machines being pulled behind the Iron Ox. After my older brother had spent some time bouncing on the steel seat of the corn planter I took a turn being jostled on the vintage potato planter. The following weeks and months included watering, weeding and finally harvesting. When all was said and done we had corn ears coming out of our ears and enough bags of potatoes to shake a stick at.
That about ended our farming career as the old Allis Chalmers went to the old tractor shed in the sky.
The soft soil has once again become hard and pocked with gopher mounds. Looking at it today, you would never have known that for a few short months it was a small fertile plot of land 200ft x 200ft.
Land is like a muscle, you have to work it to keep it growing. When the land is neglected it reverts back to the hardened soil it was known as earlier. Here we find an incredible parallel to the Parable Jesus shares in Matthew 13:1-23. In these verses we find the condition of a variety of soils and how these soils are able to receive the sweet seed of the Gospel.
Perhaps the soil of your heart is hard or perhaps it is soft, or perhaps it is even somewhere in between. The condition of your heart today does not have to stay way it is. If you have a heart that hard it can be softened. If you have a hear that has become hard, it can be softened again. Conversely, if you have a heart that is soft…sadly it can become hardened. As a farmer never ends the annual working of the soil, so our God never ends his work of softening our hearts for His transformation.
May we come to invite him to have more of our heart…more acreage to break and work. May we allow him to do the deep work of preparing our hearts to receive the seed of the Gospel and then continue to work it so that through us he can bring forth the great harvest.
