Field of Dreams

Long ago when I was about 13 or 14 years ago I read a book titled, "Shoeless Joe Jackson". It was about an old-time baseball player and a farmer...The ballplayer was long dead, but the farmer kept hearing his voice called to him...."If you build it, he will come."

Well, most of you are familiar with the film starring Kevin Costner and James Earl Jones which brought those characters whom I had read about years earlier to life for millions of people who may not have read about them.

Its a heartwarming and touching tale of hope, inner pain, loss, dreams, redemption. That last is perhaps the best...the chance the fix a past wrong...to make something right...to say "I'm sorry".

Pictured above is the browning stalks of corn which represented another part of my field of dreams. At one point in August after a terrible rain, hail and windstorm I was pretty sure there would be no corn field as it was almost all laying down flat. Turns out that it straightened itself up even though I interfered and tried straightening it myself with little effect.

But now it awaits the eventual fate af all things green. The bible says, "there is a time to die" and this is it. My son would like to try tilling the stalks into the ground, but I'm pretty sure that's not going to work for a tiller like ours, so I'll likely soon be pulling them up and burning them back into the soil with the other refuse I gathered over the summer, dead branches and brush and some leaves. Till all that and the bags of last years leaves which have been cooking all season back into the ground and maybe next year we'll get to eat sweet corn again...or potatos, or mangoes...or some other yummy thing from a lush green plant....Another field of dreams.

Isaiah 40:8 The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand for ever.