Bean and Bellhops

Tuesday, 09. June 2009 by Dan Ryan

Growing up, watching my uncles drive tractors through the fields and wait desperately for rain, I always figured farmers loved rain. The more, the merrier, right? And they do love rain.

Sometimes.

Lately, not so much. Last week, I visited my friend Luke on he and his dad’s farm. Upon arriving, we took a drive south and encountered field upon soggy field just sitting there still unplanted. So it’s understandable if Illinois farmers wouldn’t mind seeing a long stretch of blue skies.

In the meantime, many farmers are scrambling to switch their seed from regular-season corn and beans to the short-season variety, compensating for their late start. This is where I enter the picture.

On Friday, I was given the task of driving to a seed distributorship to pick up an order of beans for some farmers and then haul it back to Luke’s farm. Well, these beans don’t come in the traditional 50-lb. bags; they now come in a mammoth device called a Probox.

If you ask this city boy, Proboxes are pretty cool-looking. They’re black, sleek and hold 2,500 lbs. of seed in each. My trailer was now weighed down by 3 such Proboxes. Doing some quick math (it’s everywhere), I figured there were almost 4 tons of beans sitting on the back end of my truck.

When I pulled out of the lot, I did so cautiously. I’ve never driven with a ton of anything, let alone 4. With roughly $30,000 worth of seed on my trailer, the plan was simple: don’t spill it, you idiot.

Now I knew it would take me a little longer to slow down since I was lugging around so much weight.

As I drove to Luke’s, Jesus spotted a teachable moment; He casually pointed out how much spiritual truth is embedded in that one thought. We all have this fundamental need to slow down and reconnect with what matters most.

“Come with Me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest.” –Mark 6:31

But how often do you and I do that? Yeah, not near enough, right? God has been trying to address our inability to slow down for centuries.

“In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength, but you would have none of it.” –Isaiah 30:15 (…it’s sooo easy to gloss over this idea)

Really, why is that? After all, awareness is the first step. Truth is, there are numerous reasons for my not slowing down and re-anchoring to God. And sometimes, the cause of my bustle is all the crap I’m hauling around.

For example, I’m not crazy about a face-to-face with Jesus when I’m carrying around the guilt of my latest screw-up. Nor am I prone to get away from it all when, say, I’ve got 20 things to do in the next 2 days. Pressure, expectations, to-do lists—they all add weight to our trailers. And God can wait on hold, right? 

Back to Friday afternoon. God pressed on, calmly asking me, “Dan, what do you want Me to take from you?”

Hmm, God the…taker? While it seemed odd on the surface, I knew what He was asking. Honestly, it’s a question I’m still pondering today as I write.

There are things in this life that we are not meant to lug around, at least for long distances. Guilt. Expectations. Temptation. Regret. Obligations. Frustration. Doubt. The list goes on. You’ll never hear anyone say this process is an easy one. At the very least, it requires time and a growing belief that God will follow through on this operation to unshackle His kids.

“The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still.” –Exodus 14:14

But hope is a deceptively powerful creature. I kept coming back to this picture of Jesus as a bellhop, wearing some dorky-looking maroon uni and waiting expectantly before asking, “Here, could I take that for you?” All this bellhop’s asking for is a chance.

Because sometimes those are the things which keep us from slowing down.