Teary Good Friday

When I went to sleep on Thursday night, with the temperature in the low 40s, I determined to get up after an hour or so and check the temperature. Almost $1000 worth of tomatoes seemed worth the bit of interrupted sleep.

I must have dreamed that all was well with the tomatoes. Suddenly, one of my Queen Bees flew into my dream and scolded, "Do your duty! Cover those tomatoes!" I woke up suddenly, sure that the mental telepathy that, apparently, happens between bees and man (at least, according to the sci fi book Ender's Game) had just warned me. And the thermometer looked like it read 34!

Phil, apparently not as bleary, read the thermometer as 38, and when he tested the actual air temperature at ground level for the tomatoes with his fancy device, the temperature was 45, so we returned to bed. Me: relieved, but a bit sad that I didn't actually have Queen telepathy. And thankful that we didn't have to figure out how to lay out torn garden fabric in the dark and cold.

With that background, we woke at dawn to grey rain. So often Good Friday has weepy skies, and I, too, was uncharacteristically weepy. I read in Jeremiah 35 that the LORD said to his people, "I have spoken unto you, rising early and speaking; but ye hearkened not unto me." I think the entrenched rebellion of God's people, even to the days of Christ, when Christ wept over Jerusalem as he approached, riding on a donkey—it makes me want to be sure to live a life of responsiveness to God.

Isaiah was watering the chicks and ducklings and saw a sick duckling. He held it, and tried to give it water, but it was quite far gone. He held it as it died, and said in a surprised voice, "I've never held something that was alive and then dead." When asked if he was okay, he said he was and went off to play, but the reality of life on the farm is that we have death on the farm, and that seems a heavy burden to pass to my boys.

And yet, death is the end for us all, should the Lord tarry. A year ago, my niece was fighting for her life, and this first Good Friday since her death was especially painful. Christ defeated death, but we still live with it on the earth.

With this emotional charge as a background, life on the farm continued. We decided to stop moving the chicken pen every day (its heaviness over rough terrain made it increasingly difficult), so we put up electric net and let the birds go free. They seemed timid, but happy.

And the long-delayed metal building project took a step forward. We received tubes for concrete.

The workers excavated to put them in the ground.

And the first concrete truck ever on this farm arrived and poured the piers.

I went to Charlottesville for a dinner with friends and returned home, hours later, rested and happy, after crying and laughing and talking and sharing.

It is good to have friends, good to have a Savior, good to have life and death and richness of experience.