Advent Devotional by Connie McNeill

James 5:7-10 The Message 

Meanwhile, friends, wait patiently for the Master’s Arrival. You see farmers do this all the time, waiting for their valuable crops to mature, patiently letting the rain do its slow but sure work. Be patient like that. Stay steady and strong. The Master could arrive at any time. (James 5:7-8)

patiently waiting for…

Kalvin squinted his eyes as his right hand pushed his cap up off his forehead. He used the back of his other hand to wipe the mud and sweat mixture off his brow and move it to his pant leg. Then, he pulled his cap back in place and opened his eyes more fully. He stood in the middle of his front field as the wind kicked up dust from the oats field that resembled a desert. He turned and surveyed the little seventy-acre field that hadn’t seen rain in weeks. The cloud overhead had again failed to deliver rain. The clouds, the weather signs he usually could rely on, the weatherman on the local channel four station, even the Farmer’s Almanac had all been wrong about this season. The spring rains during planting season had been good but the only rains in late summer had been little even as the tiny green sprigs pushed through the dirt.

Sometimes weather was an angel that blessed the earth and all that lived on and in it. Sometimes it was a wicked thing that had no mercy or compassion. And, always, Kalvin and the other farmers were never the master but subject to the weather. As he walked the field, Kalvin felt that the money spent on the grain and his time to get it in the ground, was going to be lost this year. Most of the crop had withered. Oats are hardy but they need some rain!

What people don’t understand about farmers is the farmer’s immeasurable ability to be patient and never lose hope. You see, you can’t be a farmer if you can’t be patient and hopeful—no matter what. You always have to believe it will rain. You also know that there is nothing you can do but patiently wait for the weather angel to appear and bring the “showers of blessing” you have longed for.

Kalvin could taste the dust his boots kicked up as he left the field and headed back to the grain shed. Dog greeted him from the shade under the trailer, hitched to the tractor. Kalvin’s dusty hand stirred the dust on Dog’s head as he patted him. He climbed onto the tractor, picked up the gloves he had left there and struck them against the wheel hub to knock the dust off them. His left foot had just pushed the clutch to the floor to crank the engine when he felt a pin prick on his right hand, then his left, then his face but it wasn’t pins, it was rain. He started the tractor and pulled the trailer loaded with more oats into the shed. “Well, Dog,” Kalvin said, “maybe we will get these oats in this fall for next spring. We always have to believe there will be a harvest because we always have to believe that it will rain. We just don’t control the timing, do we boy? We just have to be patient and wait on the Good Lord.” Yes, we do.

Connie McNeill