A Farmer's Memorial Day Prayer
Lord, could you hold back the rain?
It seems some folk confuse fretting with ungratefulness and so as Memorial Day 2025 rolls around I’d like to honor Farmer Billy who has gone on to his reward, along with all the other Farmers who will take Friday off from their “paying job” and sit in their farm tractor cutting, fluffing, bailing, and finally, collecting hay and placing it in their barn. This task requires a 4 day commitment. Farmers will run their machines until the wheels come off.
My farmer friends know what I am saying isn’t a metaphor.
Over on yon side of the mountain in Kodak, TN my farming sister, Doe, began hay cutting season by chasing a tractor wheel, hoping to capture it like a wayward calf.
These are the things that make farming “fun,” but not really.
For you see, in order to cut hay a mingling of prayers of cuss words are most-likely uttered.
Without hay, horses starve. Cattle starve. All those cute goats and sheep . . . well, they starve.
Hay, once cut, shouldn’t be rained upon, hence the passionate plea to the creator of heaven and earth which goes like this.
Lord, I enter the gates of the earth that you spoke into existence with thanksgiving. You could-a made me a doctor, a lawyer, or even a senator’s kid. Any of those would have been an easier road; but you saw fit to plant in me a seed of tending this earth. Lord, let me tend the land in a manner in which you see fit, in a way that honors you. I’m grateful for the spring birthing of the critters and for a healthy herd and those baby chicks we need to replenish the flock.
Lord, you’ve been with us all these years, never once- NO, not once, abandoned us, even though because of my stiff neck and stubbornness I sometimes convince myself that you have. . .
Forgotten me.
Left me.
Alone.
In the field, with the serpents that slither away from the tractor blades unharmed. Spawn of satan that they are.
Lord, it has rained this year. Buckets of rain. And that gives us a thick first cutting. Lord, we humbly thank you for this thickness of grass because the weather profits told us we would have a drought this year. Do you see how we place our trust in men time and time again? Forgive us lord, we farmers know better. But we have so much riding on that first cean cutting of hay. Everything depends on hay. And,
People depend on us Lord. They depend on us for food. They depend on us to support our families. They depend on us to have enough hay to sell to those who haven’t enough land to cut hay.
But we depend on you!
And so Lord, we aren’t even worthy to ask. Even the best we can offer are filthy rags like the worn tee-shirt we use to wipe grease from our hands. But Lord, we believe that if we ask, You will provide. We ask now, let the tractor start. Let the bailer –just this one time, please- work without needing to be broken apart, the jam cleared, and that hateful machine reassembled. That bailer Lord is just the worse. Can you touch it please? Lord, let the clouds shade us as we cut the hay, fluff the hay, and bail it, but Lord, if you see fit, could you please hold back the rain?
Because we need a little help down here.
Ok, Lord, we need a LOT of help down here.
And it is in the name of Jesus . . . that little baby who came into this dark world so that we would have the victory over the toils of life, that we pray this humble prayer. Please, hold back the rain this weekend. Oh and if you could send someone-just this once- who would show me a kindness and hand me a Gatorade and a snickers bar when I am about to pass out from exhaustion, that would be amazing.
Amen.