First Frost, and I Ordered the Seed Anyway

He ordered it on the ninth of November, which is a date that means something to anybody who does this and nothing to anybody who does not.

You do not order a season of seed in November at seventy eight. You order it in February, if you are going to, and by February everybody will know whether you are going to.

The boy at the counter did not say anything. That is worth being fair about. He took the order, he read it back, he said it would be in on the Thursday. He is twenty and he was perfectly polite.

The two men at the end of the counter did not say anything either, and one of them looked at the other one, and the other one looked at the floor, and that is the whole of the incident.

He is seventy eight. He drove home the long way.

Here is what he would want said, if he were going to say any of this to anybody, which he is not. He is not making a point. This is not a man proving something to a farm store. He wants to put a crop in because there is ground and it is November and he knows what wants doing in November, and he has known what wants doing in November since he was nine years old and standing in a yard exactly like this one holding a rope.

And he has not told his family.

That is the part he is turning over, parked in the yard with the engine off and the light going long and yellow across the front of the barn. He has not told them, and he knows why he has not, and the reason is not that they would forbid it, because nobody can forbid a man anything. It is that they would be kind about it, and being kind about it is worse.

There is a line in a psalm about being renewed that gets read as a promise of vigor and is not about vigor at all.

Thy youth is renewed like the eagle's

I have to be careful here, and considerably more careful than usual, because this is where somebody normally promises. God will give you a good year. Sow it and watch what He does. I am not going to say it. Nobody talking to a man about God has been authorized to forecast a harvest, and a seventy eight year old who is handed one will be measuring a field against it in July, and if it comes in thin he will have lost more than a crop.

Psalm 103 runs through a list of things God does, and then this: Who satisfieth thy mouth with good things; so that thy youth is renewed like the eagle's (Psalm 103:5).

Read the grammar of it. Who satisfies. God is the subject of that clause and the man is the object, and the renewal in the second half is a consequence of the first half rather than an achievement in it. So that thy youth is renewed. It happens to him. There is no verb in that sentence that belongs to the man at all.

You have been renewed by somebody else's action rather than by holding out. That is not me softening the psalm; Psalm 103:5 puts the satisfying on God and makes the renewal a result of it, and the Holy Spirit who inspired that line gave the man in it nothing to do.

And notice the whole psalm around it. Verse 14 says He knows our frame and remembers that we are dust, and verse 15 says the days of man are as grass. The renewal in verse 5 is written by somebody who is perfectly clear about how frail a man is, and it is not a claim that the frailty has gone.

Who satisfieth thy mouth with good things; so that thy youth is renewed like the eagle's.Psalm 103:5

The look at the counter

Now the actual event, because it was four seconds long and it is doing a lot of work.

One man looked at another and the other looked at the floor. That is all that happened. Nothing was said, nothing was decided, and neither of those two has thought about it since.

And a man drove home the long way.

What he received in those four seconds was not information about his own capacity. It was information about what two men in a store think about a seventy eight year old ordering seed, which is a completely different thing and is not evidence about anything except them.

You have never been assessed by a look across a counter. 1 Samuel 16:7 says man looks on the outward appearance but the Lord looks on the heart, and two men at the end of a counter were doing exactly what that verse describes; the same Spirit who bears witness that you are His (Romans 8:16) reads what neither of them can see.

This is yours right now, parked in your own yard: a bearing that has no scheduled end. Psalm 92:14 says they shall still bring forth fruit in old age and shall be fat and flourishing; the Spirit who inspired that psalm did not attach a last acceptable order date to it.

Not telling them is the actual decision

Let me stay on the family, because that is where this is going to be decided and not at any counter.

He has not told them, and the reason is precise: they would be kind. There would be a small pause on the phone, and then a warm sentence, and possibly somebody would offer to help, which would be the worst of it, because help offered in that tone is a way of agreeing with the pause.

So he is planning to put a crop in without saying so, and that is a lonely way to farm, and it is also not sustainable, and he knows both.

You were not given a season to carry on your own. Ecclesiastes 4:9 says two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their labor, and the reward there is the company as much as the yield; the Holy Spirit who inspired that line put the two before the labor.

Fruit is not output, and a seed order in November is where it shows. Output is the crop, and it may be good and it may be thin and nobody reading this can tell him which. Fruit is what grows on a man who is still doing in November what he has known since he was nine, and John 15:4 says the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, at seventy eight the same as at nineteen.

So what does staying attached look like this week, since nobody is getting a program from me. One thing. In the ten minutes the truck takes to warm up, tell Him one true thing about the ninth of November with nothing asked for and no forecast wanted. Then be quiet long enough for Him to have the last word. Nobody grades that.