Hay Fields

I live about 5 minutes from town, which is just enough distance between me and city limits for a good country drive.  I regularly see cows feeding, swarming hawks and owls, tractors plowing and sweet morning mist rising from farm ponds.


All through late spring and summer, as long as the rain lasts, fields and fields of tall green hay rise up.  It always interests me.  I'll watch it begin to grow, each day gaining height.  Then, one bright day I'll see a dusty green tractor start the all-day processing of baling the hay.  When five o'clock hits and I head back home, the farmer will still be out, cutting and baling the fields.  By next morning, the fields are freshly cut with all the hay in neatly packed bales. 

I thought about that farmer yesterday - how accomplished he must feel when he looks behind him as he drives back to the barns.  He'd never know how accomplished he was, though, if he never looked back.

Sometimes in our Christian life, we are told to never look back, to press forward.  But I think looking back is a good thing.  What awesome testimonies come out of remembering where we were when God picked us up & carried us though a storm.  When our children were hurt and we cried out to a loving Father, who heard us and intervened. 

Oh, God, that we may remember what you have done.  That we may look back, not with heavy hearts but with hearts free and rejoicing, at all the plowed fields of life.  Oh, Lord, that we may worship you daily for this!