Hunger farm manager Archives

As a farmer I deal with a lot of dead things. It is not my favorite part of the job when I get to the farm in the morning and see the tell-tale ball of feathers signaling the death of a chicken or the committee of vultures that might mean a goat has been killed. I am not a butcher, and I take no joy in the death of animals or in killing them even when it’s necessary. I will not hesitate to kill when the job needs doing, but I much prefer husbandry of living animals. Keeping them alive is the art I try to master, but nothing stays alive forever and death plays a deep part in the art of living. Dead animals, dead leaves, dead roots, and all the other dead and decomposing things in the soil are what provide the food for the microbes, bacteria, and fungi who create the living soil that produces good crops. We need the dead because without it we cannot keep on living. In this way, dead things are also my favorite part of farming because I enjoy the process of redemption wherein we take dead things and we make life as co-creators with Christ.

You see, Christ is the artist of all artists when it comes to taking something dead and bringing it to life. Ezekiel 37 comes to mind when God shows Ezekiel a vision in the desert of dry dead bones being brought back to life as the living flesh and bodies of an innumerable army. Just before this God tells Ezekiel, “I will give you a new heart and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh” (Ezekiel 36:26). When Adam sinned all of creation fell, and our hearts of flesh died and turned to stone. Our God of redemption was not done, though. He knew we “were dead in [our] trespasses and sins” but He “made us alive together with Christ” (Ephesians 2:1 & 5). In fact, our redemption and new life in Christ was only made possible through His death on the cross. But we all know this, right? I doubt I am telling you anything new or showing you any verses you have not already read. Our God is a God of redemption, which should never cease to amaze us, but it also should not surprise us.

The other day something about this did surprise me. I know God is a God of redemption, but I thought He only needed to redeem because we were dead, because the world is dead, because when Adam fell everything fell with Him and now needs redemption. That is true, and a hearty “Amen” to it. I am certainly no stranger to my need or the world’s need for redemption. Yet, it was not the Fall of man that spurred God’s redemptive work. God was already in the business of redeeming before sin ever entered the equation. Look at Genesis 2:7, “Then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.” Before sin, before man even existed to sin, God took dust and redeemed it to make a living human being. Think about it. God could have created man from anything or He could have just created Him out of nothing. Both options were equally within His omnipotent ability, but He chose to create man from dust. Why? Because God is a God of redemption from the core of who He is, always has been, and always will be, an eternally redemptive God. He did not have to change at all to deal with the Fall. He already delighted in taking something dead and devoid of life and making it living, well before sin entered the heart of man.

I think maybe the devil missed this. The devil thought, “Shoot, if I can get man to fall and become dirty and sinful then good-ole pretty clean God up there won’t know what to do with him.” But God is a dirty God! He loves dirt. He loves working in the dust and the dirt to create life where no one else could see even the possibility of life. Redeeming dirt is what God is about. When Man fell and the devil thought he had beaten God I bet Jesus must have just started to chuckle. Just more mud to play in for the redemptive hand of God. God was ready to do the dirty work of redemption. He made dirt to be redeemed. Redemption was always part of the plan. From the very beginning when God created us He did not just create us from the dirt. He created us from dust, the very least of dirt. As dead as dead gets is where God decided to start, so when we died in our transgressions and sins God knew exactly what to do with us. Redeem. Restore. Repeat. Just remember, you cannot get too dirty for God. His very eternal nature desires to turn your dirt to life. You, and a lot of things in your life will have to die, but God wants to make you alive.

And He was saying, “The kingdom of God is like a man who casts seed upon the soil; and he goes to bed at night and gets up daily, and the seed sprouts and grows—how, he himself does not know. Mark 4:26-27

In my own opinion as a young farmer, there is no better verse to describe my job than Mark 4:26-27. I get up every day, drink my coffee, head off to work, and do what I’ve been told to do by God. I tend to the soil and I do my best to make it productive. I go home every night after sweating over the soil, and the whole cycle repeats. At some point, after doing this for a while the soil produces a crop.

Now, we have studied the soil for many years and science can tell us what is happening, but how? I don’t believe science can answer that one. I also am not so sure we need to know. The point is not to know how. The point is to get up every day and do the little things we know will produce a harvest. The how doesn’t matter as much as the faithfulness to work in obedience to God. In my job, I am blessed to plant seeds and reap the harvest. I get to see the result of much of my labor, but when we plant spiritual seeds in people hoping for the spiritual harvest of their salvation we quite often do not get to see the results.

For instance, take the brand new Stihl FS450 clearing saw in the picture. We can call it a weed eater since that’s what we all think when we see it, but this machine is a lot more than that. This Stihl machine can clear through the brush with its 3HP motor like five guys with machetes. It is a dream come true for the Lenca Hunger Farm to finally own one to maintain our 26 acres of land and to help Radio Rio de Dios maintain their five-acre radio field. For an average working man in a Honduran village, it would take almost 20 weeks worth of labor to buy one such machine if he spent his earnings on absolutely nothing else. We have been truly blessed, but the crazy thing about this blessing is whence it came from. Allow me to tell you a bit of a backstory about another working man.

My uncle Clifford Goldsmith, just Cliff to his friends, was a big man in the kingdom of God. He was big in physical stature to be sure, but not many would have thought much of him because of his lifelong limp from cerebral palsy. He spent his life battling this limp while also battling insulin-dependent Type 1 Diabetes. Yet, he was a trained Bible scholar and pastor whose faithfulness to the work of the Lord was evident in everything he did, and he did it all with great joy. I remember his booming laugh most of all. He was a great joke teller and he would add on to the joke little by little. His laugh would grow with the joke until it filled the room and he could no longer laugh because his face was red from trying to breathe while he and everyone in the room were nearly dying of laughter. He radiated the joy of the Lord, and he tried to introduce the world to that joy.

Uncle Clifford never married. He worked for over 35 years at UPS, and he served in many churches. He took care of his widowed mother, and he lavished love and gifts on his nieces and nephews as if they were his children. He was a great friend and a working man of God who planted many spiritual seeds. On October 30th, 2015 uncle Clifford died alone in his apartment when he went into a diabetic coma. At only 58 years of age, unmarried, and alone many in our world would call his death a tragic loss, but they couldn’t have known Cliff. They surely do not know the power of his Savior. His death was a magnificent victory – the end of a spiritual race well run.

I can say this with confidence because seven years after his death the seeds Clifford planted are blooming down here in Belen, Lempira, Honduras. The $825 I spent to buy our new Stihl FS450 weed eater was sent to me by Clifford’s sister, my mother, from the money he left to his family after 35 years of careful saving at his UPS job. For 35 years Clifford got up, went to work, and did what he believed God called him to do. He planted seeds. For him, death was no loss. He walks without a limp in heaven, and I hope he and Jesus take some time to look down and see how one of his little seeds is sprouting here in the mountains of western Honduras.

“And the seed sprouts and grows,” and I still do not know how, but I do suppose I know who. Paul explains it well in 1 Corinthians 3:6-9:
I planted, Apollos watered, but God was causing the growth. So then neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but God who causes the growth. Now the one who plants and the one who waters are one, but each will receive his own reward according to his own labor. For we are God’s fellow workers; you are God’s field, God’s building.

God causes growth. How He does it is most often still a mystery of a miracle, but I am thankful nonetheless. If I can give you any encouragement as you walk out your faith and face the Enemy – do not forget the One who causes the growth. Do not be discouraged by setbacks and problems of any kind. Your job was never to make anyone or anything grow. Your job is to get up every day in faithful obedience to plant spiritual seeds wherever God has called you, So get up!

Dirt

Seeds

¡Únase a nosotros a través del soporte!