Between commuting and delivering I’ve been working almost 13 hours a day! So naturally there is not much time for the blog. The more time passes the more it seems as though the blog is a passing chapter of my life. But there is always the problem of writing and learning, and the need to draw near to God in this way. For the mean time it seems God has called me to draw near to him in other ways.

Without being too specific hay fields are a big part of my life now as I drive in a somewhat rural area. The beauty is astounding. The big sky spreads out across the checkered plains; here there is impossibly bright green, and then the black of the plow, and then the brown of dead winter foliage. The trees alternate between hiding the fields, breaking the wind, and then breaking themselves revealing the grandeur of everything. I can’t express the way it felt when I saw the hay harvest, to witness the harvesting tractors, and then most of all, the harvested hay sitting on the fields. There is something so viscerally satisfying about this arrangement, the hay sitting there still, the bales remaining in the fields as they had just been cut.

I’ve passed by many a country cemetery, and I’ve stopped to pray for the faithful dead there asking God’s mercy that they might enter his kingdom. Cemeteries are peaceful and holy places, and they speak to us of final things, things that enter our lives in various ways. And in my line of work I am wont to meet with those who mourn for the dead. Once I stopped by a house for a pick up. The son said “Mom is still having a hard time, and we wanted to get things back to normal as soon as possible” and “he was my step dad for twenty five years.” “I’m sorry for your loss.” “Thank you.” But I couldn’t help but notice the sound of joy from within the house. Many were gathered, and very likely for the funeral. Then I remembered that calm and quite peace that enters your soul after a funeral when you are eating and drinking and speaking with those you love. There is even a kind of happiness, a sense that something very good has happened, even a kind of relief. To know this world is not our home, to know we are made for much more, and to meet with this reality viscerally. This is a blessing.

And perhaps that is why God has made those fields to intermingle with the many country cemeteries where the dead lie in all stillness after just having been the subjects of a different sort of harvest.

Come Lord with your victory, come with your peace! “as skies / Between pie mountains–lights a lovely mile.”