"Plowing"

    We all seem to go through an awkward or uneasy time in our lives when we are not sure where we belong.  We like to think that we have reached an age where we are no longer a child but we are not sure if those we know as adults think of us in this same way.  We are eager to prove ourselves by taking on more responsibilities and want to prove we can do it without the supervision of others.  In so doing we establish our footing in the adult world.  One of the task that I performed for my grandfather from time to time was the plowing of a field or garden.  Each time I preformed the task my grandfather would carefully explain to me how it was to be done.  After a number of years of instruction on these tasks and trying to prove my growth as a young man I complained to my father, “Dad, why does he always have to tell me how to do this?  I know how to do this he doesn’t need to tell me every time.”  My father wisely told me, “Son, that’s what fathers and grandfathers do, you will always be their son or grandson no matter how old you get.  Besides there will come a time when you will wish your grandfather could explain it to you just one more time.”  These words ring truer with the passing of each day.  One of the instructions that he gave me each year was, “To have straight rows or furrows keep your eyes focus on a spot much further ahead and move toward it.”  You see if you just pay attention to the ground that you are covering at the time, when you do look up you will have moved off the path that you had intended to take.  Sometimes in this life we spend so much time viewing our present circumstance we forget to look to what is up ahead.  If you don’t have a spot picked out that you are focusing on then your life tends to meander in all directions. Many a person has wondered why they did not seem to arrive where they had planned to in life and the problem was they spent too much time with their head down not looking forward.  If there was someone who had a few hiccups in life, if there was a sarcasm font I would have used it here, it was the apostle Paul.  In second Corinthians chapter eleven he takes the time to discuss some of the problems that he encountered in life.  You cannot read the list of things without wondering what was it that kept him going.  How many times do you have to be left for dead or be on the brink of death before you give up?  The key was he knew where he was headed and remained focused on that.  Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 3:13-14) If we often wonder how we ended up where we are, then maybe it’s because we took our eyes off the mark.  I used to focus on a fence post far on the other end of the field.  I never worried that the fence post would move before I arrived at that end of the field.  The God head is unchanging, the writer of Hebrews in chapter thirteen describes it as the same yesterday, today and forever.  From the beginning God wanted you to be his child.  Let us focus on him so that our paths may be straight and we may arrive at the destination that he has prepared for us.