Shade Tree Wisdom 1/1/11

1/1/11 A Happy New Year

And who could resist writing such a date? All ones. Maybe it is a prelude of blessings to come.

New Year’s Resolutions is really about setting goals, isn’t it? We want to get more done, have less mess in the office, eat less, lose weight, gain wait, or whatever. Eat more healthy meals.

So let me tell you a story about goal-setting (and achieving them).

Start by picturing a football field, excluding the end zones, it measures about an acre according to my wise informant. Now see that field covered with rows of new plants that look a lot like just seeded radishes growing in your home garden. That is what an acre of newly seeded sugar beets look like. A fine sight, an encouraging thing to behold, a success.

But you’re about 12, and it will be your job for the next days to crawl along each of those rows and thin those growing plants till there is only one plant left in every 14 inches. Your father and mother are walking along, cutting out plants till only a small bunch is left, and your job is to pluck every one and leave one standing? Why, those plants will grow into large sugar beets, and they simply need the space to grow as big as they should in order to be productive as sugar beets.

The job, hands and knees stuff, is tiring, and boring. All you can see is endless rows needing attention. Just as boring as your joining a club and running on the treadmill or lifting weights. About 90 per cent of such health club memberships lapse simply because of boredom, the end is out of sight, and the goal is not reached.

But this goal is because it is a matter of taxes.

Finally the job is done, the plants grow, and in the fall are harvested, and then trucked to the plant to be processed. It turns out to be a nice crop, and here comes the payoff for the whole process, the goal. You no longer remember the work, the endless work done back in June.

The year ends, and the new year brings the tax statement for the year, and lo and behold, usually the same mail brings a check for those sugar beets, and what do you know, one about balances the other. So the goal was to be able to pay the farm taxes for that year, and the goal is met.

Father in heaven, we pray thy blessing on the year we are entering. Grant what we need, not just what we think we need, and strengthen our faith in Jesus, the Savior from our sins. In His Name, we pray this, Father in heaven.
Amen.

GPD 1/1/11