By Scott Spreier
Today’s readings ring familiar to me, especially the one from the Hebrew Scriptures, which I first heard in the rural church I grew up in on the arid plains of western Kansas. Although we were town folk, most of the congregants were dryland farmers. Many, including my dad, were children of the Dust Bowl, descendants of German-Russian immigrants who arrived in Kansas with their red wheat to homestead 80 acres of prairie sod, transforming it into farmland.
From the stories my parents and grandparents told, it was a harsh, unforgiving life. While still in grade school, my dad worked the land with a horse-drawn plow and drove wagon loads of newly harvested wheat seven miles to town. By the time I was that age, in the 1950s, tractors and technology had made farming easier, but it was still unpredictable. Droughts were frequent. Some years, the 160 acres my mom had inherited produced a good wheat crop. But often as not, it was mediocre or poor.
In the spring of those lean years, our pastor would read God’s message to the Israelites about the end of the drought and the promise of a better future. Around our Sunday dinner table, someone would offer a blessing asking for much-needed rain but also thanking God for all God had given us. Looking back, I realize I was witnessing a quiet, unassuming faith and trust in God — a faith honed through hard labor, even suffering, but also patience, humble acceptance and most important, a never-ending trust in the future, in God and in mankind.
In this time of national and global turmoil, we tend to be selective in whom we place our faith, often limiting it to people “in our tribe.” Others? We avoid, ignore or ridicule them — or worse.
And faith in God? Even those of us who profess faith in a Creator tend to ignore God until times of crisis, as if God was some sort of heavenly fairy godfather. Let’s be honest, how can we claim to trust in God if we can’t have faith in our brothers and sisters, whom God also created?
We’ve come a long way since my ancestors landed in America. We’ve even come a long way in our lifetimes. We’ve put men on the moon, made discoveries to prolong and save lives, even ushered in the digital age and artificial intelligence.
But now is not the time to forget who created us and the world we live in. As we worship, let us reflect on our faith and ask God to help us strengthen and live through it as our forefathers did.