Original: January 28, 2008
McMinnville, OR
14 I know that everything God does will endure forever; nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it. God does it so that men will revere him.15 Whatever is has already been, and what will be has been before; and God will call the past to account. Ecclesiastes 3:14-15
Being the producers of 90% of the world’s grass seed, the Willamette Valley is loaded with farms and farmers. Since moving to McMinnville in 2003 I have had the privilege of knowing dozens of farmers who produce everything from Hazelnuts (or Filberts as we call them in Oregon), to timber to the grass seed. During this time I have noticed something intriguing about farmers. There is a certain temperament of meekness (confident humility), honor, and self control. Integrity seems to flow naturally out of this group of men. Whether these men are followers of Jesus or not has no bearing on their farmer way, which seems to me to be an old school form of integrity.
In fact, just the other day I asked my friend and fellow youth worker, Ben VanDyke, if the Farmer Way as I call it, is a by-product of some FFA teaching or some other code taught to him growing up.
“It almost seems religious in nature that all of these guys live by this same code of honesty and integrity,” I explained.
Ben simply replied, “There are no atheist farmers. When you do this long enough you learn to trust that something much greater than you will cause your crop to grow. This trust produces that mentality that you are talking about.”
Solomon was correct when he wrote, “God does it so that men will revere him” (Ecclesiastes 3:14).
There are no atheists in the mountains either. Dad always jokes back at me when I tell him he needs to go to church, “The Mountains are my church!”
I used to shrug this off as a poor excuse, but maybe dad is on to something. A pastor friend sometimes tells the men of his church that it is alright to skip church during hunting season. This used to send shivers up my spine, but maybe he is onto something. There is something deep within a man that moves him to fear and awe when he is captured in a mountain of wilderness. The mountains, the trees, and the rippling streams stir a man to inexplicable reverence towards something that is far bigger than him.
A reverence that is focused on a man’s God. He may not understand it or be able to articulate it but as Romans 1:19-20 put it, “Since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities-his eternal power and divine nature-have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.”
Verse 14 says that this is so men may “revere” Him. Maybe it is that enduring quality of the wild that whispers to a man’s heart, “Come”. Maybe it is the wild that calls his heart to step into his greatest fears and overcome them. Maybe it is the shear joy of returning to his roots prior to the fall of man.
I don’t know.
All I know is that the wild beckons a man. It calls his name. It whispers to his heart, “Come and stand in awe before my craftsmanship.”
“The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God’” (Psalm 14:1).
