The High Calling of a Farmer

The girls and I trace crackling gravel roads to bring our favorite farmer a drink. We park by the barbed wire and climb the half-naked hill. Up on this bluff, I feel exposed, too.

A stripping away.

With less of myself, I see more of God.

The hillside fields out here by the river are my favorite. Yet they offer the lowest yield. The best of our crops are grown three miles away on flat, black Iowa ground cultivated by Lee men for more than a century. But these fields are the jubilant fields. High on a God-sculpted hill, I feel closer to the Creator.

We climb higher still, to the place where Scott combs rows in a cloud of soybean dust. I remember the words we used in his father’s obituary: “He felt closest to God on the seat of a John Deere…”

This is holy work, the work of the hands.

The Good Book says we’re all priests. And I believe it. We were baptized into sacred work. We are co-laborers with Christ. As God’s people, we all wear the white robe and the priestly collar under our farm coveralls, our nurses’ scrubs and our postal uniforms.

Once — before Christ — we weren’t even “a people.” But now we are a royal priesthood.

With Christ planted within us, we have been ordained. We join in a priestly, sacramental work: reconciling God and man. We all have a High Calling, even if it doesn’t look “religious.”

The farmer plants a seed, waits for rain. He scrutinizes skies and grain markets. He knows the mechanics of the combine, the innards of a bean pod. But the Chicago Board of Trade can’t chart the real influence of this work. A farmer co-labors with God to feed bodies — the temples that carry the Spirit.

I stand at the edge of an earthen altar, while shadows grow long on the bluff. Bean pods are ablaze, like candelabra. A priest-farmer lays bare this ground. This is his liturgy.

The Scofield commentary says that the chief privilege of a priest is access to God. I sing the doxology, because the natural response to a gift like that is gratitude.

I bend my knees to the ground and pick up one stray pod from the floor of the sanctuary. I press open the pod at the seam, revealing three creamy pearls.

One pod. Three tiny beans. Three in one.

When Jesus opens the eyes of the blind, even have doubted see evidence of His good and perfect work.

I partake of a sacramental moment, and drop thanks in the offering plate for this, the vantage point of a Creator who lets us do His work in the world.

” … whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.”
— 1 Corinthians 10:31

This is a reworked post from the archives. Reflecting again this year on the High Calling of our daily work.

Friend, how do you describe the High Calling of your daily work?

Linking up with Michelle today…