What can you learn from a field of corn? If you watch a certain kevin costner movie you would learn about people coming to a baseball field, only if you build it. My lesson was something different.
I’ve learned that God speaks in so many ways. This is a fact. Believe it. Whether you do or not, I do, and it’s because I have been mindful of God more often and therefore he has been speaking to me…even through a field of corn.
This month I spent two weeks with a church in Chepen, Peru. As a team we did some painting around the church…spruced things up a bit. We performed the Lifehouse “everything” drama at a youth event. The second week we helped out with a VBS…I quickly appreciated my time as a Holland Chapel intern, my experience became invaluable there. We sang and danced to the VBS songs and taught them to the children. It was an amazing four days seeing children from the community show up and learn about Jesus.
(I promise I’ll get to the corn) The people we stayed with in Chepen showed me how to love others even more. They would cook every delicious meal for me and my team. Martha, the pastors wife, watched us intently seeing what we liked and disliked and changed the menu accordingly. A few times, I had to remind myself that I was still living on the world race. Thats how well they took care of us there. And Lydia, the nicest adopted grandmother I’ve ever had and whom we stayed with at her home, kept us fully stocked with the biggest and best mangos and made us countless luchema bombas. (Luchema is a fruit native to peru (it tastes like butterscotch and pumpkin pie) and bomba means popsicle). Needless to say…it was goodness in a bag…
It was a little difficult leaving Chepen, but we made our way down to Trujillo to spend our final week with two other teams. This is where the corn comes into play. We stayed at an orphanage that is still under construction. There were three work assignments for us to choose from. Brick making, painting, and corn. I gladly chose corn…while apparently brick making was the more fun task…who knew?
I start my task of covering the fertilizer that has been laid with dirt. Each row takes about half an hour or so to till. This spoke to me in respect to the world race itself. If each row represents one month on the race…
row one/month one – I speed through and had plenty of energy, I messed up a lot and had to redo some things though
row two/month two – I start getting into a rhythm. I’m learning to be patient walking though the stalks of corn which I thought represented people…more about that in a second.
row three/ month three – I begin to lose strength. I realize that the only way I will be able to move on is to ask God for his help.
row four/ month four (starting month four next week) – changing things up. I’ve been digging trenches the same way for three rows and now my hands are blistering and I have to change the way i’ve been doing things. Prophetic statement right there…
That’s about as far as I go on the corn rows. The other lessons I learned though are just as significant. I started to view each stalk of corn as a person. Some were growing faster than others. They were all planted at the same time, yet there were some more receptive to fertilizer and water than others. Some just didn’t grow at all. They were stuck as baby corn stalks. It just spoke to me how people are receptive to the gospel and others aren’t. It depends on how hungry you are for growth as to how fast you will grow.
Then there were the weeds….which are sin. They disguise themselves as something beautiful. So much so that there were times I said to myself…look at that pretty flower….wait, that’s a weed that just looks like a flower. And then I’d uproot that sucker and throw it out.
My final lesson…my last day in the corn I keep hearing God tell me the verse…”the harvest is plenty, but the laborers are few…”
I just let that verse remain in the forefront of my mind while I worked. Just as there weren’t many people willing to work with the corn, there aren’t many people willing to jump into ministry. Working with God requires a lot of the same things corn does…patience, persistence, grace, tenderness, care, time, prayer (yes, crops need prayer too). God speaks to use through his creation because he is in his creation. God is in all things. Men, women, things, trash, buildings, plants….EVERYTHING!
Start being mindful of God and his creation…i promise he’ll start speaking to you through it. I you don’t believe me then obviously you skipped a good portion of this blog and my own personal experience.
I love you all very much just as God loves you…
