“…establish
the work of our hands for us—
yes, establish the work of our hands.”
The bike
path east of town cuts diagonally through tall fields of corn that sometimes buffer
prairie winds and sometimes channel it. In July, when the temperature is at 100
degrees, that narrow corridor is a wind tunnel. Back when I used it daily, I
fought prairie winds all the way down, then sailed along when I came back to
town.
Really dry
corn makes all kinds of noise. Its leaves get stiff and curl up lengthwise,
then crack against each when they get bullied by wind. I’ve never been a
farmer, but I’ve lived beside 12-foot corn most of my life, and I know when to
get worried. Back then we hadn’t had rain for far too long. Weeks before
already, I stopped mowing when our lawn turned to toast. From a distance that section
of corn along the bike path still looked emerald, but up close it was smacking
and cracking.
The man
who planted that particular tall corn corridor died that summer. My wife told
me about his death weeks after it occurred. I’d missed it myself. Had I known,
I would have gone to the funeral. Once, years ago, that man told me I ought to
write a book about his life. I should have, but never did.
Cantankerous
and quarrelsome, his life deserved a story. We’ll call him LeRoy and protect
his memory, not because he was ever an innocent. His wife left him after a
couple decades of what must have been horror. For a time, fistfights with his
son were public spectacles. Once, a neighbor’s sow wandered on his yard, and LeRoy
shot it dead, then called the neighbor to pick it up. That afternoon, the neighbor
called the radio station to nominate LeRoy for “Good Neighbor of the Day.” The
whole town laughed when he awarded the distinction.
For a
time, LeRoy went to the same church we did. A friend of mine told his buddy, a
Lutheran, that our church would pay for their new building project if the
Lutherans would take LeRoy off our hands in the bargain.
Thanks
but no thanks, the Lutheran said.
There’s
more. Lots more. There should have been a book. He was never a saint. Some
considered him a crackpot. Worse.
Later in
his life, he mellowed, thank the Lord. I’m sure there were moments when he
wished he hadn’t been what he was.
The day I
heard that Leroy died I took that bike path east of town in withering heat and
felt his absence because it bothered me, strangely enough, that there was no
one around to worry about his corn. LeRoy would have, but he couldn’t, and he
wasn’t.
I felt
somehow responsible, if that makes sense. LeRoy always liked me; I’m not sure
why. He didn’t like a lot of people, and he wasn’t shy about preferences. When
I rode my bike through that tunnel of tall corn and heard its leaves cracking,
I felt sad because I told myself he ought to be there to worry, like all farmers
do.
As all of
us do—about a bunch of things. When it comes to worry, most of us have fields
of too dry corn.
I’ve got no
crops to worry about, to cattle to feed. But I’ve got my concerns.
Like
Moses, and like LeRoy, I’m sure, I often pray that God almighty will establish
the works of my hands—establish these very words I’m typing. Don’t let ‘em dry
in the hot sun. Keep ‘em growing and keep ‘em green, even in the heat. Make ‘em
better than they are.
Moses’s
agonizing concern arises from a heart estranged, someone whose thirsty soul has
been languishing in the eerie darkness of an eclipse, God himself hidden. What
Moses is asking for is that what he does with his hands in that wilderness
where his people are serving a sentence, what he does from day-to-day, his
work, his toil, his care—that all of that is blest. That’s all he wants, as do
most of us. Bless it, Lord.
What he
wants is nothing but good corn to feed a hungry world, something to grow up gloriously
from a little more than a cracked pot.
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