Northern Farmer

The Fourth has come and gone and things are back to normal around here. Of coarse they were normal during the Fourth also. Cut a field of hay yesterday but later in the afternoon we had us a barbeque here. Some chicken, pork chops, crock pot beans with our home raised hamburger, salads, a fantastic potato dish, oh I almost forgot, sweet corn, deserts and just a darn good time with some of our good friends! Sittin in the front yard under the maple shade trees with a beautiful NW breeze, no mosquitoes, no flies, everything just right! The gals did a wonderful job putting together that feast and everyone did their duty and ate till the cows come home!

Today it was back out cutting hay again and tomorrow baling starts again for the next couple days. Saturday evening if I get done baling at a decent hour we might even head to a local town carnival. We seem to end up there every year and the kids have a good time with friends and taking in all the rides. Typical small rural America town carnival. The carnival itself is one of them traveling carnival with all the characters that come with an outfit like that. As old as time itself, but many of the foods and stuff are cooked up and served my various town organizations like the Legion and others. There’s usually a few thousand people there, many locals and lots of people from surrounding towns and cities. So anyway, if there’s time we’ll go for a couple hours in the evening when it’s getting cooler outside.

Sometimes I look over the countryside and just have to smile. It’s really nice out here although getting a tad bit crowded. A person really notices it on the week of the Fourth, the old county tar road is always busy with tourists. Boats, campers, RVs, jet skis, and an uncountable number of motorcycles. Everybody tying to get out into the country for a little bit of time. The way I figure it I have it made living where all them other folks want to be. And I ain’t stuck on some teeny patch of ground in some over crowded campground either! Don’t have to put up with the drunks, druggies, spoiled brats bellering, none of that. If I hear bellering it’s a calf bellering for it’s mama. That’s always music to my ears. Nope, they can have that “modern” recreation, eh! More crowded in them campgrounds than a sidewalk in Manhattan!

In a while the countryside will empty out again, in a few weeks it’ll all be a memory again. Then we have months of just being ourselves. Oh we get a few weeks of hunters, but this is mostly private lands here so that limits it allot to relation or friends of the landowners. Not like when there’s a lot of public lands around. Then a person looses a lot of rights. Got everyone tramping through. But, we don’t have that here so that’s fine by me. One thing really noticeable this year is the way it looks to me with these high gas prices the traffic is heavier than ever. Just like folks figure on wasting as much as they can on the road to destruction. OK, here I go again, I’ll try and stop myself as much as I can here, but it just gets me how much waste there is in this country. Just pure waste, nothing else, just raping the world. I often think about the church in this world and how some Americans think we are the way Christians are supposed to be. I don’t know, but the way it looks to me, there ain’t gonna be all that huge of a percentage of American Christians making it into those pearly gates. If you want to see Christians following Christ just go to Africa or South America or many other places around the globe. Here it’s just a form of godliness, but the real idol is self and nothing else.

Here it’s just that endless race to please self. And it’s dominating the church in America. I just think how much the countryside has changed in my lifetime, with the social problems in the countryside now the same as down town Hollywood. There wasn’t much of that years ago in the country, now it’s the norm. A materialistic church, feel good salvation or should I say an easy and cheap fire insurance or so many think. Then just live exactly like before, not change a bit. Oh, maybe cuss and swear a little bit less in public, but that’s about it as far as change. Just a show to fit in with all the others putting on the same show and still open season for all out, pure materialism and worship of self. There ain’t no government program ever gonna solve any problem out here cause all problems stem from exactly what I just wrote. There ain’t gonna be any agrarian society or sustainable agriculture as long as self is the idol. The only thing that will save the countryside is an awareness of God, pure and simple. Nothing else will work, nothing. An awareness and a submission to our Lord and Creator is the only thing that will ever make this society change its tailspin direction.

I pray for God to send revival into the countryside, the real revival, knock em to the ground revival. Where folks see themselves as God sees them, in sin. A life changing revival where folks repent for real and live godly lives, for the rest of their lives. I want to see the countryside empty out with hundreds of people in the churches, crowds outside the churches not even knowing why they’re there except they have such conviction that they are driven to the churches seeking forgiveness. I’d like to see the tourists stopping and crawling out of their vehicles, groaning on the ground begging God to have mercy on them. Not knowing why, just hit so hard with conviction that they have no power to go on their own.

It’s happened before and will happen again and I pray that I see it and live through it. Revival in the countryside! That’s what I’d like to see before the Lord calls me home!

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 5th, 2007 at 8:03 pm and is filed under Northern Farmer. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.