The Parable Calf
December 8th, 2007 by Northern FarmerThis past week has been a hum dinger around here. As I wrote on my last post, we’ve been busy with church stuff all week and tonight, Praise the Lord I’m home, yee haw! Now I love being in church and all that, but it’s so nice to be home after three nights in a row at church. The Christmas program went really, really good! It was well below zero last evening, cold out let me tell you, and the Christmas program had a great turn out, went off without a hitch, well at least the audience didn’t really know the mistakes and there was a great time of fellowship afterwards with Christmas treats, hot apple cider, lots of hot coffee and just generally a great time. My “huge” role as thee number one “wise man” went smooth. Got all dressed up as a wise man is supposed to be I reckon, although I still had my long johns on, cause this ain’t Florida, plus my boots too, no sandals. They mentioned sandals, and I just replied, “are you insane! There’s a foot of snow out there and ten below!” That settled that! But all is done and done well!
I think it was Wednesday evening we went to help setup for the program, and it was ten or fifteen below zero out. The next morning I was doing chores and wouldn’t you know it. There was a new born calf, outside, in that weather! Oh boy, make my day! I figured it would be what’s called a cardboard calf, that means froze through and through. Well, just imagine, nice and snug in some 100 degree water, life is good, plenty to eat and all, then all of a sudden extreme pressures, your world turns upside down and you suddenly are laying on the ground, soaking wet and it’s below zero out there. Now I know some folks have saunas and think they’re really some tough folk sittin in them things and then after a while they go running around in the snow thinking they’re special and oh so tough, but then they run for cover all proud of how tough they are. But lets get to reality here, if you want the same experience as the calf and want to be as tough as a few minute old calf, you get out of that sauna and stay outside for the rest of the winter. You survive that, then your tough! No cheating though, you gotta stay wet and lay on that ground, then get up and walk in small circles or something.
But that calf musta decided to live and went for the milk, found it and survived with no help what so ever from me. I was amazed, yes, a person can still be amazed even after calving out well over a thousand calves these past few years. That rascal survived, it got up and went for it with all it had, and it only had a few minutes to make it before death would have claimed it. Got me thinking that morning, got me thinking allot. Life and death, how easy and how fast death can come when we don’t act on what we have. That calf had life a few feet from it. It had a good mother, but the odds were overwhelmingly against life. It’s mother cannot take charge, she can lick the calf but the real life is in the milk. The mother cannot grab hold of the calf, cradle it in her arms and nurse it, keep it warm and protect it from the cold. But what she had was life, life in the milk, but it was up to the calf to struggle and reach for it. To find what end of the cow it was on, to learn how to suck, fast! Life was offered in a cold, cold world of death but it was up to the calf to pursue life. The calf had a choice, and this is for real, because I’ve seen calves that didn’t take action and the result would be death.
That calf got up and went for the life that was offered it and soon found it as it’s body shook in the extreme cold, it’s wet body freezing fast, the ears frostbitten, the tail froze solid. It grabbed a hold of the gift of life and power started flowing through it’s veins, the body shaking as the power was fighting the freezing. It had life! Now a few days later, the high today was five above zero, the low was twenty below, that calf is curled up in a holding pen outside with her mama, curled up on some straw, alive. We don’t normally calve in winter, this one slipped through the cracks and took me totally by surprise. But it’s a calf I’ll never forget, fighting the odds, grabbing onto the life that was offered it, fighting for the life that was offered! The Bible, or should I say the Gospels have many parables and many are told in a form that people on the land could understand. That morning I knew I had witnessed a parable, a lesson in true life. I won’t go into it much at all here, just leave it at that. There’s allot to be learned on the farm in the parables our Lord sends our way.
December 11th, 2007 at 9:51 pm
You story of the “Calf that wouldn”t Die”, remindes me of some of the things in my world growing up, that connected me with the Biblical world. Growing up in Arizona, allowed me to sympathies with people in the Bible, in ways, people from cold places couldn’t. The climate of the holy land is very similer to the southwestern U.S. In fact, many Bible films were made there. Many plants from the Mediterranean, and the Holy Land, were my backyard shrubbery. Pomegranates trees, mentioned in the Old Testament, were backyard trees in Tucson. Ever had a pomegranate fight? That hard rind smarts! But the red juice tastes great in the hot sun. Date palms lined roads. Just like they do at the ancient city of Jericho. When the Bible says”so and so went up to a tamarix tree and sat under it”, I understand, I’ve sat under many of them. They are now such a pest as a non-native plant, that they compete with native cottonwood, willow riparian woodland in the southwest. Almond groves are found all around the Tucson area, blooming every spring like they have since biblical times. Olive trees drop their fruit all over sidewalks. They are lovely trees, but the pollen they shed is hayfever heaven. Acacia are found everywhere, just like in the Middle East. All those herbs like hyssop, thyme, rosemary etc, are part of peoples gardens. Even the Mediterranean gecko has set up shop, along with the native species. My best friends had two magnificent fig trees in their yard, You get the picture. Visualizing those Bible stories is easy, when half the landscape around you comes from Bible lands. I got a chuckle, looking at a picture of Jeruselem, showing huge prickly pear cactus growing wild outside the city walls. Cactus, other than “rhipsalis” species native to Madagascar, are only found in the New World. The Apostles, never saw one. Yet, there they were, somebody had brought them from America, and they grew lustily.I was watching the movie “Ben Hur”, one night, and during the part of the movie where Ben Hur visits his Mother and Sister at the Leper Colony, I noticed, a VERY large Blue Agave, The kind they make tequila with, growing there in the Leper Colony. I wonder how many other people besides me, noticed this blooper over the years? I can’t watch Westerns for much the same reasons. Growing up near Tombstone means I see every little discrepency in the movie, from what the real Old West was like in the real world. You might say…..I know to much. Better if you had never seen it. Your innocence is still intact, so to speak. Heh. Heh
December 12th, 2007 at 11:52 am
Son of a gun Mark, your kinda a good writer! Reminds me of the old TV show Bonanza, was watching that years ago and Ben sat down on some real nice hay bales out there in early days Nevada. Now I wondered, where’s there baler and tractor, cause they never did show it
The other night I was watching a show on TV, remember we only have Sky Angel, no regular TV at all and they were showing the Holy Land, were showing where David took on Goliath and it was down right beautiful, then they’d go to the next valley, pine forests and beautiful scenery, well I couldn’t hardly believe my eyes. After a lifetime of watching Hollywood movies and different productions showing Bible stories I always figured it was a barren wasteland, but then again I always wondered how all them people could survive there if the whole place looked like Arizona, hmm. It musta really been a land of “milk and honey”!