Lessons from Corn Stocks
My hubby and I have a garden and, in that garden, we planted four rows of corn! The plan was to raise enough corn to share with our two sons. The corn was nearly ready to harvest-ears were getting fat and ripe.
Enter the bear! Overnight, he ate his way through 80% of the corn crop. We found out bears can smell “sweet”, so he took out the good stuff, knocking over the stocks in the process. Ger spent a number of hours clearing out the broken stocks. What remained were stocks with immature ears, most of which were left standing all alone in the garden.
More disaster hit as the tail end of tropical storm Earl brought big winds to our area. Those winds knocked down most of the remaining stocks. As I was clearing away those blown over stocks, I noticed a couple of things and a spiritual truth came into my mind. Let me share it with you!
I noticed that corn stocks have a very shallow root system. The roots are practically on the surface of the ground. That explained why they fell over so easily in the wind.! This fact was made even more significant when I also noticed that a strong wind could more easily knock down shallow rooted corn stocks when they were standing all alone without benefit of neighboring stocks to support, to lean on!
So it is in our spiritual lives! In order to stand against the trials and winds of adversity that often come into our lives, we must put our spiritual roots down deep into the Word of God, into the truths of Scripture. Failure to do so leaves us vulnerable to whatever comes against us. God knew this and so He tells us often in His Word to study, meditate, think upon, ponder and then apply what He says. When we do these things, the roots of our faith go down into a solid and sound foundation of truth-truth that will hold us up in the face of trouble.
In addition, God makes it very clear we are not to be Lone Ranger believers. Surrounding ourselves with fellow believers for spiritual growth, nurturing and accountability gives us the support we need when attacks, trials, opposition and difficult times come. We get to “lean in” on our brothers and sisters in Christ and that support keeps us from falling over.
Combine those two factors-roots deep in God’s Word and support from fellow believers- and we can withstand most anything that comes our way! So, I guess losing the corn crop was not a total waste-God used it to show me a spiritual lesson from the corn stock that I can apply and also share with you! God is good to do that, don’t you think?