Life as Farm

I’m reading through “Eat This Book” by Eugene Peterson. I came across a section a few weeks ago that has stuck with me. After quoting a poem by Wendell Berry, Peterson describes his early observations of farming and says…

I’m sure there are exceptions to this, but as I have thought through my early memories of being on those farms, I can’t remember a farmer who was ever in a hurry. Farmers characteristically work hard, but there is too much work to do to be in a hurry. On a farm everything is connected both in place and in time. Nothing is done that isn’t connected to something else; if you get in a hurry, break the rhythms of the land and the seasons and the weather, things fall apart—you get in the way of something set in motion last week or month. A farm is not neat—there is too much going on that is out of your control. Farms help us learn patience and attentiveness (p39)

Peterson writes elsewhere of patient urgency. As we follow Jesus we’re called into a life in which there is work to be done, yet our work is dependent on a greater work in operation: “A man scatters seed on the ground. Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how. All by itself the soil produces grain.” There’s no room for laziness on the farm; likewise, the impetuous and frantic farmer is a fool, not understanding the scope and limits of his work. The challenge, then, is living in the Kingdom in such a way that we work hard, but in submission to the time and place the Father sets us in. I think that as we learn this we find pleasure in our daily work and begin to see how the small and tedious things we do fit into a larger scheme. We anticipate the harvest as we sweat, and set our hope on it as we sleep.