The first snow has come and gone...the transient herald of nearing abundance! Wood splitting, trimming iris, bringing in potted plants, storing away the last of produce fill the fleeting time. Charlie and Sam moved the hens up the hill and into the big bright hoop house. All summer this place has been a desolate storage space; too hot to stay in and dreary with the dust of last winter. Now, permeated with the spicy fragrance of a new deep cedar bedding and filled with subdued clucking, it takes on the cheery aspect of the sunshiny winter hen-house.
Five of the hens were still in denial...evading grasping hands to wander aimlessly across the empty pasture and deposit eggs in forlorn tufts of dying grass. Mama caught them and the boys locked them in with their more resigned companions that night. Whether they became sensible and heeded the call of food and shelter remains to be seen.
Inexorably the splitter lays open the pale splintered hearts of cured logs and we heap them up, raw and lifeless. Yet these dead shards of life yield to us warmth and cheer in the sultry breath of fire. Again the Creator at once reminds us of ever present mortality and the promise of redemption. Everything is redeemed on the land. What falls asleep will awaken. That which dies gives birth to abundance. The privilege of the husbandman is to reach with reverent mortal fingers into this heart of creation and feel it beating with a vitality from the divine hand that we are powerless to recreate. It it is granted us to nourish, prune and care for it and in turn receive from it divine gifts of life and nourishment.
Here comes a time to heap up in your heart the abundance of these blessings, along with the severe mercies. Blessings...what a great many there are and how gracious is our Father. And yes...the severe mercies...these wounds from the knife of sorrow. These too are a gift, because when they make our well run dry, pain cuts deep and strikes into the true life flow of the heart...the love of God. So He makes pain a servant that masters us to drive us back to the greatest gift...His redemption and the springing of joy from ashes. Thanksgiving does not deny pain. It is the antidote to it. So when you are counting up the mercies of God, mark together the blessed and severe, the joy and sorrow. They both mark the road to eternity, and both glorify Him through us...joy when we praise Him and sorrow even more when we praise Him.
Last night Daddy observed that these last days of fading warmth are another gift to add to the account. The time is ripe and short...every hour, every minute, becomes a period of grace for the last work of the season to be completed. Times like these remind us of the days when we first essayed to name our farm enterprise. Among the titles eventually abandoned was the epithet "NeveRDone Farm". This is life...the pleasure of living for man is found in his work...that which is incomplete until his appointed time.
"There is nothing better for a man, than that he should eat and drink, and that he should make his soul enjoy good in his labor. This also I saw, that it was from the hand of God."
~Ecclesiastes 2:24~
These are just a few of the things on my Thanksgiving list this year.
What are some things one yours and would you care to share them?
A blessed and merry Thanksgiving to everyone!
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