3 Life Lessons Learned in the Barn

On this blistering hot July day, sweat poured down my back as I left the comfort of air-conditioning and lemonade and trudged forward to complete the duty assigned to me. The gravel driveway out the back door of our home, leading across the highway and into the barn, felt longer with each plodding step.

While my friends laughed and frolicked in the nearby swimming pool, I had to work. There would be other days for the pool, but not today. A truckload of whole oats had been delivered to the feed room of our barn, and the oats had to be ground into a feed mixture suitable for our livestock. The process would take all afternoon.

Using a shovel, I loaded the grinding machine with a mound of oats. Next, I confirmed that no foreign objects (like nails) contaminated the mix. Then, I stood guard and monitored the grain as it went through the funnel of the grinding gears and fell onto the concrete floor beneath.

Taking up the shovel again, I transferred the ground-up grain into the nearby corner and then turned to repeat the dirty, monotonous routine. All afternoon, all afternoon long. The smothering atmosphere of the workroom, the sting of the oat fuzz, and the realization that I was the only one responsible for this chore made me feel crummy. But I persevered, one shovel load at a time.

At long last, the sun went down, and my job ended. Done! All the oats stood milled and formed a mound reaching nearly to the ceiling. Thank goodness. A cold drink, a hot bath, and a soft bed awaited me.

In the agrarian environment where I grew up, work was a necessity—for everyone. No one got a hall pass. Did I like the barn? No. Did I enjoy being isolated in the feed room when my friends were together swimming? No. But what I did not know then, I realize now … the barn served as a training ground, and for that, I am deeply grateful.

3 Life Lessons Learned in the Barn

• The value of hard work when there is no audience

• The significance of stick-with-it discipline needed to complete a task

• The satisfaction of pausing to savor a job well done

Hard work, discipline, and satisfaction—whether in a barn or a boardroom, at a desk or in a ditch, at a conference table or in a community center—weave the fabric for inner fortitude. The barn was hard and the nasty experience unpleasant, but the lessons learned there have stood the test of time, and are worth their weight in gold. I am convinced, God is in the barns of our lives.

Living With Eternal Intentionality®

“He has also set eternity in their hearts” (Ecclesiastes 3:11).

Whatever you do, do your work heartily, as for the Lord rather than for men . . .” (Colossians 3:23).

Do you have a barn in your life, a place of hard work without an audience, where only you and God know the grueling hours of work you put in?

Where is there hardcore discipline needed to pick up the shovel and complete a task facing you?

Perhaps you are a caregiver with no end in sight, the mother of a newborn needing a nap, a student preparing a paper, or a pastor cloistered away in your study. Maybe you are standing at a stove stirring a pot of soup or sitting at a desk grading papers. When did you last pause to savor the realization of a job well done?

What takeaway motivates you to stay in the barn until the job is done?

For This I Have Jesus

From the moment he crawled into bed our bed, I knew we were in serious trouble. His ragged breathing practically shouted the diagnosis: Pneumonia. But we had to wait. In the country where we lived, the doctor remained unavailable until office hours later in the morning. No personal numbers, no pager, no on-call nurse, no after-hours clinic. None. And while we waited, our little boy’s fever steadily rose. With each short, rattling breath, the sickening feeling in my stomach increased as his hot little body sought comfort nestled between my husband and me.

In those restless hours, more than once I looked out the window and begged daylight to come. Somehow, in one of those distant gazes, the Lord brought to mind a story filed away in my brain—and it helped.

When the clock finally ticked its way to the appropriate hour, the agonizing wait ended, and we saw our doctor. For more than two weeks, our son battled the menacing respiratory disease. Then, our entire family took a deep cleansing breath when he finally donned his backpack and walked out the door to resume a normal life. Weak but well, we had our little boy back.

The story the Lord used to sustain me is here for you. Maybe in the wee hours of some frightening morning, it will be your comfort as well.

Taken from Every Knee Shall Bow: A Collection of Writing and Thoughts About Jesus, by Joan Winmill Brown

She writes,

A missionary friend told me of a time of great crisis in her life. They were stationed in a primitive area, and her husband had to go on an extended trip into “the bush”. He had scarcely left when one of the children contracted polio. The others soon developed a minor malady with alarmingly similar symptoms. My friend felt desperate. How could she bear the responsibilities—day and night nursing, the anxiety at home as well as concern for her husband who was venturing into unknown territory?

Eventually, the episode has a happy ending, The children recovered; the mother lived through a very difficult time; and the father returned safely, rejoicing over souls who came to know Christ because he had gone to them with the Gospel message.

Our conversation had started because she was comforting me during a period in which my tribulations loomed large. But as she talked, they seemed small compared to some of her experiences.

“How did you survive?” I asked her. “Of course, I know you must have prayed and prayed and prayed!”

“I didn’t,” she confessed. “I moved like on automation from one task to the next one. God understood, and I felt His presence. Also, He gave me a simple sentence that kept me going day and night. I want to share it with you. Try it; it will sustain you through anything: I’ve proven its worth. I just affirmed: ‘For this, I have Jesus.’”

Living With Eternal Intentionality®

“He has also set eternity in the human heart” (Ecclesiastes 3:11).

“When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze” (Isaiah 43:2).

When has the Presence of Jesus been a supernatural comfort to you in the face of an agonizing trial?

Why do you think the phrase—For this I have Jesus—holds powerful sway in the midst of difficulty?

Award-winning Poem: This Siberia

Grab your mug of hot chocolate, find a fuzzy blanket, and settle in for a remarkable trip across the shivering tundra known as Siberia. Regardless of previous images lodged within you concerning this frigid expansion, today’s journey of words will transport you in a distinct way and leave you with a newfound appreciation for these distant saints and the writer who captures their world.

Vivian Hyatt attended the 2022 Blue Ridge Mountains Christian Writers' Conference in Black Mountain, North Carolina. Imagine her excitement on awards night when she received first place in the category of poetry! The poem she submitted to the competition was "This Siberia". She says of her creation: "Note that it is a poem in four parts, and it should be read out loud and at one sitting to get the cadence and the mood."

This Siberia

1.This Siberia

These silent snowscapes

these mounds and frozen drifts

these long blue shadows

these crusted trees

of pine and birch

these unsmirched tracks

these plumes of smoke

from the wooden houses

these laden roofs

this frozen river

this endless white

this silence –

this Siberia.

2. Sixteen Hours on the Trans-Siberian Railway

We eat and doze and read and eat again.

The birches in the snow glide by

stands of birches

scattered birches

birches.

The villages glide by

wooden villages

one named

Forgotten

smoke pluming from chimneys

and the snow glides by

and the wooden villages and the birches.

We stop in a town named Winter

high rises and high wires and train yards and

rusting steel and a high rusting bridge over something snow-covered.

Here in the town named Winter

the snow is shoveled and scraped and dirty and drab.

We are glad

when we move on and the birches glide by again

and the snow.

3. Bolshoi Ungut

The road ends at this village deep in snow

deep under the mountain

deep with pines.

Here narrow foot-paths for the narrow life

in the narrow wooden houses

with their painted window frames and painted fences.

Here a wood pile and an axe

there a cow in its narrow shed sustaining warm life inside the warm houses

felt boots warming on the clay stove where the children sleep.

Here blind Nikolai and his wrinkled Anna with their Bible verse on the wall

with their Bible.

They stand and pray and weep and are thankful

here in this narrow life in the narrow village

where the road ends.

4. Celsius has crept to minus 41

The school bus has not come by.

School closes for the children at minus 35.

Two of our group left last night along the dark and snow-blown road,

darkness

and blowing snow

all the way

to Krasnoyarsk.

They say tires can burst in this cold.

We pray they made it.

There is no cell phone contact.

This is February.

It began snowing in October.

The river will thaw

come May.

Living With Eternal Intentionality®

“He has put eternity in the heart of man” (Ecclesiastes 3:11).

Before reading Vivian’s poem, what were your thoughts about Siberia?

Did the writer change your perspective? If so, how?

Given the opportunity, what question would you want to ask Nikolai and Anna?

What question would you like to ask Vivian?

Accomplished writer Vivian Hyatt attended the 2022 Blue Ridge Mountains Christian Writers' Conference in Black Mountain, North Carolina. Imagine her excitement on awards night when she received first place in the category of poetry! The poem she submitted to the competition was "This Siberia". As previously stated, she says about her work, "Note that this is a poem in four parts, and it should be read out loud and at one sitting to get the cadence and the mood."

For more of Vivian’s writings, visit her website VivianHyatta.com Swings of Contentment