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By
Ernest Shubird
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 had
lost all sense of time that hot July morning as I leaned on
my hoe handle and let my imagination indulge me in projects
more exciting than hoeing corn. Then suddenly I saw Grandpa-until
that moment my role model of kindness and compassion-coming
through the field, walking rapidly between the rows and swinging
a long, keen maple switch.
Now I've done it, I thought
as I realized I had crossed the limits of his forbearance.
I began to hoe the young corn as fast as my 11-year-old arms
would move, not daring to look up as I heard his footsteps
on the plowed ground and the corn brushing against his legs.
Stunned by the reality of what was about to happen, I remembered
the time he told me, "Jesus cried sometimes, but He could
be tough when He needed to be." Grandpa was going to
be tough with me-for the first time in my life.
That summer I was 11, and the
Great Depression's hard times still lingered in Tennessee.
Most mountain people depended mainly on the food and livestock
they raised on their small farms.
On that morning, I was in the
roastin' ears patch to hoe so that Grandpa could finish up
his plowing. "Don't let him piddle along," Dad had
told Grandpa. "Dust his britches if he needs that, but
don't let him jest play along and lean on that hoe handle.
He's had some lazy spells lately." Dad was afraid Grandpa
would be too lenient with me, for I had heard him tell Ma,
"Pa is jest too softhearted for his own good sometimes."
One of the great moments of
my young life was that day the past summer when I overheard
Grandpa tell a visiting preacher that I might turn out to
be his best grandchild because I "hankered after things
of the mind." But "things of.
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the
mind" had possessed me that morning. As I leaned on my
hoe handle, slapping now and then at the sweat bees and corn
beetles, my thoughts were at the creek where I had been planning
to build a dam across the narrow crossing. I would dam up the
creek with mud, leaves, and rocks, and then make boats from
bucket lids and old cigar boxes and have a |
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The
best way is the love way
This
is what God's been patiently and lovingly trying to
teach us all along: to do the right things with the
right motivation, out of love. And using God's example,
we also should try to persuade others to do the right
thing out of love. Certainly God has to have a lot of
patience and love with us, so we should have patience
and love with others!
—David
Brandt Berg
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navy
on the high seas. Absorbed in my engineering project, I did
not even notice that Grandpa was no longer calling out "Gee"
and "Haw" to the mule in the nearby field.
Then I saw him coming toward
me, walking swiftly between two rows of corn with that maple
switch in his hand, and I began to hoe.
"Wait a minute, son,"
he said softly. "Somethin' I need to take care of. How's
yer hoe doin' this morning'?"
"It's doin' fine, sir."
"I don't think it is, son.
Let me have a look at it."
I handed him the short-handled
hoe he had fixed especially for me, and he began to talk to
it, holding it at arm's length.
"Hoe, I sent you here this
mornin' with my grandson to hoe this corn. You know this corn
needs to be hoed. You know we'll need roastin' ears this fall-he'll
need some to take to school fer his lunch. But you wouldn't
hoe. Now, I'm going to have to tune you up a bit so you'll
help my grandson."
Then he whipped the hoe handle
until the maple switch was broken and limp. As he tossed away
the remnant of the switch, he handed the hoe back to me. "I
believe it'll do a better job this time, son."
"It'll do much better,
sir," I assured him as I began to chop at the weeds with
energy I had never realized. "I think it'll do fine."
Grandpa turned and walked away.
After a few yards he stopped and turned, tears in his big
blue-green eyes. "Told yer ma you'd eat with us today,
so don't be late. Yer grandma's cookin' us a big peach cobbler,
and she'll be aggravated if we ain't at that table on time."
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