I was pondering something of Martin Luther in his observation that the wealthy landholders are truly thankless.
The Unthankfulness of Husbandmen and Farmers.
"The husbandmen and rich farmers, said Luther, are not worthy of so many benefits and fruits which the earth doth bear and bring unto them. I give more thanks to our Lord God for one tree or bush than all rich farmers and husbandmen do for their large and fruitful grounds. Yet, said he, we must except some husbandmen, as Adam, Noah, Abraham, and Isaac, who went out to see their grounds, to the end they might remember God’s gifts in his creatures."
Martin Luther. Selections from the Table Talk of Martin Luther
I ponder this as I have to hire a rich farmer to put up my hay for livestock. This farmer years ago begged us to cut and bale this hay, when we had other people doing it.
So to appease him as he was a neighbor, which hurt the feelings of the other custom baler, we did this.
As of late, he appears to have changed his mind in now is deliberately ruining our hay in leaving it get rained on before bailing. This season, he cut it, allowed it to get rained on, lectured me, then hired it out to be bailed wet, which causes it to mold.....and when I came to check fence, I found the wire wrapped around the post several times as someone while cutting hay had pulled the fence up and destroyed it.
I observe these big farmers of Monsanto now. They are all pompous asses in ignorant rural folks with now money to spend. They care nothing for wildlife in place for them, and care nothing for neighbors.
I grow a dozen ears of open pollinated corn in great trial and am grateful to God for those ears. I see the huge farmers harvest thousands of bushels of corn and are filled with lament that it is not enough.
This nation has harmed me as have these farmers, so I did not bless them, and in turn this season I noted that the crops appeared large, but God was at work in the kernels were small so the harvest was lessened, which means these arrogant farmers are not going to have as much money to trust in.
That pleases me and I hope for a day soon when they are broken and reminded what it was to be a poor farmer in America, which was not that long ago.
In that, a kind person donates 100 dollars to the blog. Like my corn, like my pumpkins, I value them in God's Grace as I have not lost sight of the individual dollar or the individual kernel, like the rich have.
How can any rich person appreciate a dollar or one hundred thousand dollars, when there are millions in an account? They can not, no more than Bill Gates could comprehend the value of an Office 97 copy purchased used for a few dollars, instead of the several hundred the new versions cost, as Mr. Gates is making codex changes so the two will not interact with each other, as he is not interested in the poor having one copy, but in thousands of copies sold to the rich to make him richer.
I celebrate wealth and it has always been the Lame Cherry Continentalist Party doctrine that all people who worked should become millionaires, as 50,000 dollars per year at 20 years is a million dollars, in all providing for themselves.
That which is sinful is the misuse of God's Gifts. The failure to be charitable in using a donation as a weapon to rub in that the rich have more than the poor and that the poor are nothing on their own without a non generous hand out.
That is the wickedness in poor people not doing any work and expecting a handout and rich people expecting poor people to remain debased surviving on dollars in a tens of thousand dollar world.
This blog is work, and therefore I earn the donation as pay. Nothing is given here.
I see much of this though in those who lack appreciation of anything when they are wealthy or when things are handed to them. My Grandfather won a used 99 Savage rifle when he was a teenager, and he used the rifle to survive.
That rifle was entrusted to me by my Beloved Uncle and will never be sold no matter how dire things are, God forbid.
Savage stopped manufacturing this model, but rich people started collecting them, like rich farmers collect old farm tractors which I am in need of. I see massive hording displays of 99 rifles, and I would dearly love someday to have a 300 Savage in that model to hunt deer with, but I could not afford it due to the gluttony of these collectors. It is the same with old farm tractors in the rich have collected them to the point no one can afford them.
People can not appreciate anything if they have a surplus of anything. Yet they keep trying to fill that void inside of them with things or money which will never be filled.
Few are the farmers like a distant relative of mine, I remember as a child. We called him Papa, as everyone did as he was old. He was a millionaire farmer of his day, and I can still see him in the 80 acre field across from his home as we drove by on Sunday evening from my Grandparents, in his out in that field doing what he loved most in hoeing in the rows of his soybeans.
Yes he had tractors and cultivators, and had hired hands, but he was a husbandman out tending to the individual plants in his field.
I would venture no farmer hoed anything in their fields for the past decade in America, no more than any rich person tended to an individual dollar or hundred dollars for a moment in all their lives.
If you do not know the value of a dollar, have joy in a single cucumber in a garden, have no thrill in one hen's egg, if a new car is not exciting beyond driving home, then all it has lost value, as it is lost in the millions and plenty of having so very much.
Each person has their limits in what is too much, that turns them from being humane to inhumane. When you forget what it was like or never knew what it was like to have one thing, then it is too much for the appreciation to God has ceased.
That makes you unworthy of the benefits, not from having, but from having lost the value of the Gift.
agtG
