A barn on Hwy.5 in Central Arkansas
"My son, if you will receive my words and treasure up my commandments with you, making your ear attentive to wisdom and inclining your heart to understanding, if you seek it like silver and search for it as for hidden treasures, then you will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God."
Proverbs 2:1-5
"Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him,
and He will make your paths straight."
Proverbs 3:5-6
The older I get (and trust me, I'm getting older!), the more I contemplate the past. Don't do it if you can avoid it; it's painful. But hopefully my past mistakes will help someone else to avoid them.
As I was reading Proverbs 2 today, I was reminded of one of my favorite scenes as I drive now and then along Highway 5 between Benton, Arkansas, and Hot Springs Village. This beautiful old barn is so picturesque, so compelling, such a lovely backdrop for the sky. And yet there is something very melancholy about it; someone has left it for the elements. Someone has failed to nurture it, to maintain it, to keep it purposeful. No longer does it do what the builder constructed it for. It merely sits there year after year, becoming overgrown with vines. I drove by it the other day, and it is more dilapidated than it was when I took this picture a couple of years ago. It has outlived its purpose.
Maintaining the kind of trust in the Lord that enables us to learn wisdom is not the simple task of simply saying, "I trust in the Lord." If it were, most people would have it all together, because most people would say, "Yeah, I trust in the Lord." But more importantly, we are not to "lean on our own understanding." Oh, my, that's the hard part!
Proverbs 2 tells us to seek it like silver and search for it as for hidden treasure. Once we find it, we must maintain it. If we let it go, as the owner of the barn has done, we will be no more useful than we were before we began.
Does your barn need repair? Mine does, it seems, all the time. I thank God that He is patient; I need His longsuffering in my life.
Hammering and scrubbing, and praying that I never outlive my usefulness,
Gloria
2 comments:
You never cease to amaze me how you tie everyday life with the scriptures. I hate seeing old homes or barns just falling away. This one no doubt has a lot of history behind it.
What a great picture!! In words and in truth. I was told once (a long time ago) by someone much older, that she had done her time at church and it was my turn to work. I never understood that. Does God allow us to let things go because we are of an age? Is it ok to stop maintaining our barn when we get old? I don't really believe God said that.
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