Rock piles.

Depending on the lay of the farmer’s land, before planting crops it’s sometimes necessary to harvest rock. The freezing of winter and the thawing of spring brings to the surface of the ground stones that were previously hidden. Some are hand-sized. An easy grab and pitch into a skid loader bucket or onto a flatbed trailer. Others require two hands, a knee bend and a strong back. And on rare occasion, one needs to be pulled out with a tractor and a log chain.

Say the phrase “pick rock” to any Iowa farm kid and they know exactly what you’re talking about.

The reason for picking rock is simple. Come harvest time you don’t want a field stone to go screaming through the internal gears of a John Deere combine that could be traded even up for one of your nicer homes in Scottsdale, Edina, or Lake Forest. So to avoid costly down time and expensive repairs, you walk the field and move the rock to an out of the way place.

My Uncle Ev and Aunt Katherine had a rock pile on their farm. We kids called it “The Mountain”. We played regularly on it. It seemed so big. Go back there now and it’s still there, a memorial to a literal century of hard work and successful farming. When we look at it, we remember.

Joshua 4 is one of my favorite accounts in the Bible. It’s where God rolls back the waters of the Jordan River to allow the people of Israel to walk across on dry ground. God instructs them to build a monument of 12 stones to mark the event. He had a specific reason. “…in the future, when your children ask you, “What do these stones mean?” tell them that the flow of the Jordan was cut off before the ark of the covenant of the Lord. When it crossed the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off. These stones are to be a memorial to the people of Israel forever.” -(Joshua 4:6-7)

God knows that His humans have short memories. That’s why He wanted them to set up the 12 stones as a reminder of the miracle He did. That rock pile was for remembering the great work He had done for them.

This Thanksgiving season as I count my blessings, it occurs to me that I’ve done a lot of worrying this year. A lot of asking God why He seems so slow to respond in certain areas of my life. And if I’m honest, no small amount of doubt and anxiety. Wondering sometimes silently and sometimes in full voice, “God, are you gonna take care of me?”

The irony, of course, is that I’ve done my worrying and doubting and whining while sitting squarely on top my rock pile. Those stones of good health, food to eat, a place to live, a car to drive, healthy children, opportunities to earn a living, friends old and new, wonderful parents, a church family, and multiple moments of God’s grace and mercy, dropped into my life at a point of need and always above and beyond what I could ask or imagine.

What audacity. To sit atop my rock pile of blessings, lifetime proof of God’s faithful provision, and wonder if He will come through for me this time?

Perhaps there is more symbolism to the stones than I realize. Could it possibly be God’s inside joke of what a blockhead I can be?

God, please forgive my arrogance of distrusting You while surrounded by your tangible blessings. This Thanksgiving help me to be mindful that You are forever faithful, my Source and my Provider. When I wonder, when I doubt, remind me to look at the rock pile that You’ve built in my life and renew my faith and trust, because You are faithful and true.

Here’s hoping you take a good long look at your rock pile.

Happy Thanksgiving.

“The Lord is gracious and righteous; our God is full of compassion. The Lord protects the simplehearted; when I was in great need He saved me. Be at rest once more, O my soul, for the Lord has been good to you.” – Psalm 116:5-7

Todd A. Thompson – www.ASliceOfLifeToGo.com

The type of weed determined how you killed it. Corn, milkweed, lambs quarter, pig weed, and water weed could all be chopped. Nightshade had to be pulled. As did velvet leaf, a.k.a. “button weed”. One button weed could have a hundred seed pods, each containing at least 700 seeds. When it’s ripe it explodes, sending on the wind a “be fruitful and multiply” scenario that anyone in a John Deere hat cringes to see. So you pull the button weed to make really sure it will die.   

When I was in junior high my Dad bought some farm land in north central Iowa. It was excellent land for growing corn and soybeans. The first year we farmed it we discovered a major weed problem. Apparently the previous owner didn’t care much about keeping the field clean. There were huge patches of cockleburs growing in the soybeans.

Cockleburs fell into the “pull” category. Only they weren’t as easy to pull as velvet leaf/button weeds. Some things are like they sound. Velvet leaf is soft. A warm fuzzy in the weed kingdom. Pulling cockleburs is like grabbing sandpaper. Itchy. Scratchy. Irritating. I can still recall the smell of cocklebur juice on my leather gloves and the blisters on my hands.

The cocklebur patches were so thick that one time I pulled 34 plants without moving my feet. Even then my Dad looked back and saw we were missing some. So in the worst of it we got down on our hands and knees to look under the soybean plants to be sure we got them all.

We weren’t walking beans. We were crawling them.

Sure enough, under the leaves were small cocklebur plants that, had we not looked, would have grown up to mock us as we drove by the field two weeks later. Just when I thought I’d got them all, I found some more.

Lately I’ve been thinking about how I live my Christian life. Some weeds are easy to see. And because they are easy to see they are relatively easy to get rid of. Walk and chop as you go along. An obvious unkind word? Yank it out. Lose your temper and make a fool of yourself? Whack it hard and it probably won’t come back. It’s not hard to walk along and get rid of the weeds you see.

More difficult are the weeds growing underneath. The cockleburs of an arrogant spirit. The velvet leaf of pride that, left to grow to maturity, will explode into seeds of destruction. 

The only way to find them is to get down on your knees. It’s awkward at first. You even resent the fact that you’re having to kneel. It seems so, well, beneath you. But once you’re down there, the more you look, the more you find. And when you find, you have to pull. Don’t chop at it. Small weeds, left to grow, will later mock you. It was always embarrassing to drive by your field and see one lone button weed, five feet tall and waving at you in the breeze. You had to go back and kill it. But this time the stalk is an inch thick and the roots are set. Much harder to pull out. A back breaker.

If only you’d pulled it out when you were down there on your knees.

As we walk, look back and look under to see what we’re missing. Time spent on our knees pulling weeds makes for a cleaner field.

A cleaner field makes for a better crop.

A better crop makes for a great harvest.

Praying for you as we pull together.

“He who wants his garden tidy doesn’t reserve a plot for weeds.” – Dag Hammarskjold

“When we confess our sins, He (God) is faithful to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” – 1 John 1:9

Standing in the church parking lot, if the wind is right (or wrong, as it were) you get a good whiff of the Holsteins. Growing up an Iowa farm boy, I’ve always smiled at city folks’ olfactory sensitivity. A little scent of cow yard in the breeze and they run to their car as if trying to escape a nuclear cloud. “They’d never make it in the country”, I smile to myself.

A few days ago, walking across the church parking lot, I caught the scent myself. It brought back memories. And it got me thinking.

When I was on the farm everyday working around hogs and cattle, horses, chickens and sheep, I got used to the smells. It’s not that my nose quit working. It’s that the scents of animals, hay barns, feed bins, and manure became normal. So much so that when city friends came to visit and held their noses I didn’t understand what their problem was. After being away from the farm for a few years and going back, I was now the city guy. The aroma of the hog barn was more potent than I remembered it.           

As I stumble along each day, seeking God’s face in my awkward imperfect way, He is faithful to kindly show me more about myself. I am learning that my own fallen nature keeps me from realizing just how fallen I really am. Like the farm kid whose nose has adjusted and no longer experiences the full aroma of manure, my fallen sin nature keeps me from realizing, apart from Christ, how sinful I really am.

It’s taken years being away from the farm to realize how pungent the odor of a cow pie can be. Farm boy or not, there are other things I’d rather lay a nose to. Here in the city I can roll up my window and drive away from the dairy farm to the good smells of restaurants and mall stores. It’s not easy to drive away from my sinful self. Apart from Christ, it’s impossible. Still, somehow I need to get some distance from myself to get God’s perspective on who I really am if I am to become the man He wants me to be.

There’s no easy way to do that. It starts, I think, with time alone with God. Really alone. Time in prayer. Time reading the Bible. Time in honest conversation with God. Time spent doing a ruthless self-inventory to see where I have failed and where I need to grow. My friends who attend Alcoholics Anonymous put it more crassly, though I think more accurately. They call it the “process of owning your own shit.” I like that. Because that’s exactly what it is. It’s not a fun process. It’s a necessary one. I never looked forward to cleaning the hog pens, but it had to be done.

We shy away from it. We bury ourselves in activities and fill our schedules with every imaginable distraction. Anything to keep from “owning it”. Yet something happens when we “own it”. When we own it we are admitting to God that we are broken. When we own it we take a step away from self-delusion and a step toward truth.  To own it means it no longer owns us. When we own it we are living more truthfully. We are able to say, “This is who I am. Good, bad, and ugly, this is who I am. A person in process.” A person God, in His incredible mercy and grace, accepts with unconditional love.

It’s that unconditional, unfailing love that makes the process possible. As the Bible reminds us, “it is God’s kindness that leads us to repentance.” (Romans 2:4) God’s love creates a safe place where we can deal honestly with our stinky stuff. God doesn’t hold His nose at our sin. He loves us into submission. His kindness draws us back to Him.

Yet He doesn’t stop there. He is not content with that. He wants to grow us. To stretch us. Because He is committed to “perfecting the good work that He began in us.” (Philippians 1:6) God loves us too much to allow us to be nose-numb when sniffing the breeze of our life. He wants our senses fully awakened. To smell in our life everything that’s beautiful and everything that stinks. Then to make more room for the beautiful by being honest about everything that stinks. The more we “own” our stinky stuff, the more we experience God’s love and forgiveness. The more we experience God’s love and forgiveness, the more we become the people He wants us to be.

Owning it.

Lots of pain. Lots of tears. It’s not a fun process. It’s a necessary one.

But there’s no better feeling than being honest with God.

“Do you not know? It is God’s kindness that leads you to repentance.” – Romans 2:4

“The Lord is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and great in lovingkindness.” – Psalm 145:8 

Surrounded by appropriately noisy young families juggling kid packs, baby strollers and otherwise testing the limits of allowable carry on luggage, this matched pair sat quietly together with only their jackets and boarding passes in hand. Their appearance was pleasant. He in a tweed sport coat, she in a turtleneck and heavy gray sweatshirt with “Charlevoix, Michigan” elegantly stitched across the front in navy blue thread. They would be flying along with us and a DC-10 full of holiday travelers from Phoenix to Minneapolis. As I watched them I silently wondered what kind of Christmas they would have.

Upon arrival at my parent’s home one day later, we were told that my Grandfather had suffered a heart attack. He stabilized a bit for a few hours, but died early Christmas morning. My Mom woke me up to say simply, “Grandpa’s gone.” I guess if you had a choice of where to spend Christmas, heaven would be right up there.

My Grandmother asked me to speak at the funeral. During the next several days I sorted through the memories I had of my Grandfather. One memory in particular elbowed its way to the front of my mind. When I was a small boy, I loved to play in the snow. If I happened to be outside at my Grandparent’s farm when Grandpa Walt was headed toward the barn to do chores, he would pull me across the snow in a scoop shovel.

I remember the first time he ever pulled me. “Sit down and hang on.”, he said.

“But Grandpa, this is not a sled!”, I said.

“Sit down and hang on.”, he said.

“But Grandpa, this is a scoop shovel!”

“Sit down and hang on!”

So I sat down in the scoop and grabbed hold of the handle. Even as a preschooler I dripped with firstborn perfectionism. I spent every second of that first ride to the barn worried that this was not a sled. It was a scoop. Sleds are for pulling. Scoops are for scooping. This is not practical.

Before I knew it we were at the barn and the ride was over. Grandpa went in to milk the cows. I was left to look back toward the house and ponder the trip.

Sometime after that first ride in the scoop I quit worrying that it wasn’t a sled and started to enjoy the ride. I held on for dear life when Grandpa spun me in a circle over icy packed snow and swung me high and wide up the sides of giant drifts. I laughed and shrieked when he broke into a run; a mere eighth inch of aluminum between me and the frozen ground. Always before I knew it we were at the barn and Grandpa would go in to milk the cows.

I confess to you that I have spent too many of my nearly 40 years worried about what I’m riding on through life. I’ve wasted too much time wishing my scoop shovel was a sled or a sleigh or a snowmobile. And I think I’d hate to know how much excitement and joy I’ve missed by being practical instead of enjoying the ride. We Americans are particularly good at working for the future at the expense of the present. We’re so consumed with upgrading to a sled that we rarely experience the thrill of riding in our scoop.

Ecclesiastes 3:1-2 tells us that “there is a time for everything”, including a time to be born and a time to die. In between those two events is the trip to the barn. Are you enjoying yours? Are you hanging on for dear life and allowing God in His sovereign love and plan to swing you high and wide over the big drifts of life during this thrilling, exciting and sometimes scary pull? Or are you still trying to explain to God that your scoop should be a sled?

Whatever God wants to pull you in, sit down and hang on. Enjoy the ride. Before you know it, you’ll be at the barn. At the end when you’re left to look back and ponder the trip; you’ll want memories, not regrets.

When we boarded the plane in Minneapolis for our return flight to Phoenix, there they were. The Tweed and Charlevoix couple. Row 5, seats E and F. I wondered what kind of Christmas they had.

I can’t say for certain, but it looked to me like they were riding happily in their scoop.