#35 When you are beat down, take up the strain.

If you’re tired, take my yoke and let’s get some work done.

28. Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.  29 Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.  Matthew 11

Bible-brainiacs are quick to assert that the passage means that each Rabbi [teacher] had their own curriculum and in the Hebrew tradition it was called a yoke.  Jesus would then be saying in these verses that his lessons are the ones to select if you are tired, beat down, “weary and heavy laden”[KJV]. If only you would come and learn, your soul could find rest …lie down beside still waters…Ps 23,  your life become rejuvenated and you could carry own. The ‘why’ is his declaration that his classes are “easy and his burden [work load] is light” because he is a “gentle and humble” teacher. Anyone who spends time ‘learning at His feet’ [reading, listening and studying the Word] would agree with the explanation and the principle but is this only a scholastic metaphor?

Where do the Rabbis get their metaphor? They got it from their agrarian [farm] society just like Jesus did for most of his illustrations.

  The yoke is the harness that rests on the shoulders of a pair of bovines trained as draft animals since youth. By placing the force on their shoulders they can use their entire body to push against it instead of a pulling action. They must push together and their stride must match or they will simply nullify each other efforts. Oxen are used because they are stronger than most common horse breeds, cheaper than specifically bred draft animals, last longer during a hard day and are eaten when they reach then end of their working life.

 Let’s jump to American history. Pioneers used oxen to pull the big Conestoga wagons across the American plains because they outlasted the other commonly available draft animals even though they pulled at the pace of a walking man. Nowhere near as fancy as a prancing horse or imposing as an ornery mule, they prod along pushing against their yoke with the pioneer’s entire household in tow. At the end of the day their progress dwarfed the distance must faster animals could advance westward. Their style is efficient. Lean forward into the load. When the nose nears the ground, take a step forward. Repeat until sundown.

When we who are too weary to rise, too weak to take another step, and yearn for rest, we must get to our feet. When our soul is under the crushing weight of life; be harnessed for work. When our burdens are great and we can’t move, lean into his yoke and take a sideways glance at our partner in the strain. When it appears our face will hit the ground, take a lockstep forward with Christ and repeat until the day is ended.  It will amaze you how far you got when you look back. Counterintuitive and miraculous all at once.

#34 Black Dirt 12/13/2013

 #34     12/31/2013
Black Dirt                                      

Fertile Ground

The rusty pickup truck, tattered rain gear and the fact that he was working in the cold spring rain told me where he was on the organization chart.  The steady downpour masked my sloppy approach through the puddles so he was startled, “Aunt Bev would appreciate your work.”  “Thanks, but I could do without the rain”, he muttered beneath the towering pines sheltering us as he measured the cavity one more time. While he carefully carved her resting place, other stones nearby drew my attention. Dad was laid in this ground in 1977, mom joined him in 2009. They lay near my baby brothers Michael, 1946 and Stephen, 1951. There should be another marker for a sister but that wasn’t done sixty years ago when the baby never took her own first breath.

Drifting back to the five-gallon-bucket sized hole being carved out of the earth, “These trees were only chest high when Grandma came here in 1971”, I remarked  looking down at Gladys’ monument  next to the marker that would soon receive a final date. “Glad they are so big today,” he replied, clearly not used to conversation while excavating resting places.  The lush black soil that would soon envelope a small canister of Bev’s ashes held my attention as he finished up.

Fort Dodge, Iowa is in the heart of some of the richest farmland God’s ever stirred together. Folks have an unusual pride for this loam and the crops it can grow; even the state song brags of its fertile fields.  I suppose anything that holds the title of ‘The Best’ can instill pride but you have to admit that dirt is a unique category.  It is hard to describe this vibrant material because it looks alive, petroleum like and makes amateur gardeners look brilliant. Fixated on that black hole, I realized that this little patch of ground not only contains my ancestors, it is the soil I grew from.  

Sainted Grandma Gladys was a single parent when it was scandalous. Charles Lemuel was a shiftless spouse that deserted his family in the middle of the Great Depression.  Forrest and Clayton grew up determined to have good names to erase the disgraced one they were left with.   Adopted son, Chuck followed in his father’s dishonorable path but daughter Beverly stayed loyal to Gladys until her death. Clayton served in the Coast Guard, wed godly, schoolteacher Charlotte and poured out his life from the pulpit. Childless, their attention was directed at Forrest’s kids. Forrest grew up under the dark cloud of abandonment that drove him to work tirelessly, serve four years in the National Guard and three years in the South Pacific with the Marines. Wounded at both Tarawa and Saipan, he returned home to his bride Margaret, graduate with honors from the engineering program at the University of Iowa and start his family. 

 

 

Hallowed Ground

There’s a church on the corner of North 24^th Street and 14^th Avenue North, a dam holding back lake of memories. Entering the sanctuary for the third Bailey funeral attended there released the flood of recollection that became a celebration among the only congregation Bev knew in her eighty five years. After singing Bev’s favorite hymns the pastor asked if anyone would like to say a few words. “We had three sets of parents growing up”, stated Coni. “Bev, Gladys, Charlotte, Clayton, Forrest and Marge raised the three of us.”  ”We learned to sing, to harmonize, in these very pews.” Mark explained why each of us now sat in a different pew, the ones we remembered sitting in decades ago.   “Blood, sweat, and tears,” I contributed. There is a piece of glass at the east entrance that doesn’t match the surrounding door assembly. A rambunctious eight year old crashed through it in the middle of just another tussle with his buddies. There’s a scar on my chin from a ragged floor tile in the nursery. “Lots of maid-rite [the Iowa term for sloppy-joe] sandwiches and Margaret Carr’s mayonnaise chocolate cake consumed back there,” I pointed, recalling  families assembling at the construction site to feed men working all hours into the night to complete this very structure.  Forrest did more than come home each night and swap his white shirt and tie for coveralls. He co-signed the church’s note and mortgaged his home to ensure its repayment.

Before the service, we three stood at the front of the church together.  “Do you see the notch?” ”It is right there, “I declared after finally locating a blemish on the alter dad had lovingly shaped for his church. I tried to find it in 1977 before dad’s service but was unsuccessful. Coni and Mark were surprised to see the two inch by one inch imperfection and learn the story surrounding it. The pastor and organist were just as taken back because neither had noted the scar beneath them for all those decades of kneeling there.

It fell upon dad to construct that alter in a church where the alter represents salvation and healing. He solemnly carried out his task. Nearing completion of the structure, the next step was routing a round edge to protect those resting their arms and hands upon it.  Whether a machine fault or a bone weary amateur carpenter, the bit came loose and tore into the back edge near the right end. Mortified by the gouge in that hallowed surface and without a simple way to replace the damaged board, dad remained throughout the night to locate a piece of matching grain to make a plug. After several attempts to hand fit a filler block to his satisfaction, he rerouted the edge, sanded the surface, walked home to shower and dress for his job that day. Dad knows now how many tears are soaked into that alter and how many have joined him there after kneeling upon that wooden ark of redemption.

Good Ground

Seven hundred miles driving home brought another story of dirt to my mind:

Luke 8: 5 A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path; it was trampled on, and the birds ate it up. ⁶ Some fell on rocky ground, and when it came up, the plants withered because they had no moisture. ⁷ Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up with it and choked the plants. ⁸ Still other seed fell on good soil. It came up and yielded a crop, a hundred times more than was sown.”

The author’s lesson is the stuff of learned writers and preachers but permit me some latitude. Images and memories from the last two days reminded me of the rich and fertile soil, the good soil,  provided  by my family and church. They gave me everything I needed to produce a good crop with my life. How would those gathered to remember me some day consider the soil I’d left for them?

“… some fell along the path; it was trampled on…”

Did my kids get trampled by my agenda, ambitions and pursuits? It is so easy to keep on pushing for your own dreams instead of adjusting for a wife and children. I wonder if I gave them my first or just seconds and thirds during those years when every moment was so important.

 “…Some fell on rocky ground…”

Yep, guilty. There were many times when being authoritative was too severe for my tender kids. Becoming a grandpa has made me more gentle about being right. Right doesn’t seem so important if you damage everyone around you. Know some children who struggle to forgive the hard man that fathered them well into their adulthood?

“…Other seed fell among thorns…”

Values. We all have them but unfortunately many have really bad ones. Did I give my kids the values they need to succeed financially, mentally, socially and most important eternally. Maybe more than anything a dad can do, his values may be his most important legacy.

“…Some fell on good soil…”

The years are teaching that parenting does not end when your children can vote. Perhaps my most important parenting is still ahead of me. If I can get it right, then when my decedents are driving home from the service that commemorates my life, they too may conclude that they were raised in good Black Dirt.

 

 

Tome 34 December 31, 2013 written in a series by Timothy Bailey and posted at  adifferentstoryblog@blogspot.com