Shade Tree Wisdom 4/11/12

          It was after the civil war, and several people seeking a home place had come to southern Idaho, a place not yet settled, and had begun homesteading.  One family that came was the Hatfields, originally from Kentucky, lost several crops to locusts and drought in Missouri, burned out in Kansas by jayhawkers, and were now settling here.

          A neighbor describes them. “The Hatfields know who they are, they know what they believe in, and they know their kind will last.  Other kinds of people will come and go.  The glib and confident, the whiners and complainers, and the people without loyalty, they will disappear.  But the Hatfields will still be here, plowing the land, planting crops, doing the hard work of the world because it is here to be done.  If you know people like that, consider yourself fortunate.

          With the celebration of Easter, Christ is Risen, just behind us, what kind of person will we be?

          We have a Canna or two blooming in our back yard.  The only one who sees their beauty is the people who look from our window, for otherwise, as the Elegy in the Country Church Yard has it,
It is “Born to blush unseen”.

          I sometimes think life can be like that.  When we are growing up maybe we dream of the heights we will reach, the fortune that will be ours, the fame we will gather.  And that just never happens.

          And then?

          We spend our days doing what lies at hand for us to do.  We do it faithfully, and to the best of our ability, and lay it down at night with a sigh of satisfaction, for we did the best we could.

          We “Bloomed where we are planted.”  For here is where we serve our Lord and do what He lays before us to do, and we are satisfied.

          Oliver Goldsmith, in his The Village Preacher, has these lines.
               “Remote from towns he ran his godly race,
                Nor e’re had changed, nor wished to change, his place…
                So “Truth from his lips prevailed with double sway,
                And fools who came to mock, remained to pray.”

          We say, “Christ is Risen”, now let our lives reflect that faith in how we live day to day under His care.

GPD 4/11/12