“…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 those particular
acres of tall corn 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, he
deserved his story told. 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.
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 far too often 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 toasted 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, a farmer’s right and privilege.
As all of us worry—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, no 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 away as if totally absent.
What Moses is asking for is 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 be blessed. That’s all he wants, as
do most of us. Bless it, Lord. Bless it all. Bless it, please.
What he wants is good corn for a
hungry world, something of his to flower gloriously even though it’s in a cracked pot. “Establish the
work of our hands,” he says. “Please, establish the work of our hands.”
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