Poor Richard’s Almanack (yes it ends with a ‘k’), compiled and printed by none other than Benjamin Franklin, predicted the weather and also declared with confident authority exactly when eighteenth century farmers should plant their crops for maximum productivity.
Today, it’s a complicated science. The amount of information available to twenty-first century farmers is mind boggling. Unless you’re associated with a progressive farmer, you may not realize the heightened level of sophistication involved in producing today’s crops. Global positioning satellites tell the tractors exactly where to go. While Detroit promises to one day produce self-driving cars, our agribusiness neighbors in their seed corn caps and Carhartts have been successfully employing this science for years.
My front porch overlooks a beautiful valley lush in its blue green haze of young, pre-tasseled corn. And I swear, I can actually see it growing. It seems that only yesterday I was cooing and coaxing the fledgling seeds, willing them to break through the freshly tilled soil like new chicks pecking at their shell. I love the symmetry of arrow-straight rows as they slowly come into focus like a Polaroid snapshot.
We are farmers at heart, living on farm land that’s been in Marilyn’s family for decades. There is corn growing on both sides of our property and the wall of green is currently rising at an alarming rate! It can be kinda’ disorienting. Sitting here on the porch, I take notice of how tall the corn has become. I look down for what seems like only a few minutes then to look up and…Yikes, is it me? Or has the corn just grown even taller?
It closes in around us, eerily creeping our way. I know the field isn’t growing toward the house but it sure feels like it. The cute symmetry of the tiny plants morphs into an ever- heightening wall of corn stalks. It waves its leaves at me in what can only be described as a kindly manner. Yet, like Chuckie the clown in the horror movie, when I look away and look back, I swear the entire field has moved closer! I fully expect to hear an invisible orchestra strike a creepy cord…Dund! Dund! I push back my paranoia, choosing instead to listen to the leaves as they whisper in the breeze.
I’m told that at this stage of development, a corn plant can easily grow three to six inches each day. And very soon a golden tassel will crown each plant, launching it into a new season of growth. The tassel causes the plant to refocus all its growing strength inward; as it ignores its outer shell and obsess on developing the fruit it was bred to produce. The outward stalk fades away as it channels its nutrients toward the single ear of corn.
I’m not sure when it happened, but I realize I have “tasseled”. I reached a tipping point in my life where I began to think differently about how to focus my energy. I focused more on why I’m here and less on what’s in it for me. Like the corn, I searched for ways to better serve others. Quite surprisingly, I discovered an unexpected benefit: I felt better about myself. There’s a huge difference between merely doing what feels good and feeling good about what I’ve done. And here’s the kicker: I sense God’s pleasure.
A passage in the Bible addresses this phenomenon.
“For land that has drunk the rain that often falls on it, and produces a crop useful to those for whose sake it is cultivated, receives a blessing from God.” Hebrews 6:7
I think I’m finally starting to get it. I’m like the corn growing all around me; I’ve been planted here for a reason, and it’s not how big I become, but how useful I am.
Read Ron’s column, Simple Faith, each Saturday on the Faith Page (page 3) of the Lancaster Eagle Gazette, or visit www.lancastereaglegazette.com.