Learning By The Way

One spring, Grandma and Grandpa and Uncle Bob and I planted a couple acres of strawberries up on the hill. The strawberry plants came in frozen bareroot, a lump of brown stems trailing naked brown roots, covered in frost. We would set up the paper cutter on the picnic table under the spreading branches of a shade tree. Then, we would take these apparently lifeless bundles of plants, snap off the rubber band, and slice off all but a few inches of root. Whoever thought this up as a plan for growing things must be crazy, I thought.

Grandma and I sat on the planting machine, our hoppers full of these bedraggled, shorn roots, and stuffed them as fast as we could into the spoke pockets as the planting wheel turned. Grandpa followed behind with the rake, his arms firing like pistons in an engine as he tamped the soil down around each newly planted lump. Out of his shirt pocket peeked strawberry plant roots, stowed there in case he had to fill in a spot that we missed. We tried not to miss. Fast, fast, fast. My hands would fly, grabbing plants, separating one, placing it root up in the maw of the planting spoke, again, again, again.

Sometimes in the lulls between hopper loads, I would see Grandpa look up at the sky, pull out his watch to check the time, and then place it back in his pocket.
“What time is it, Grandpa?” I’d ask.
He’d pull out his watch, check it, and tell me the time.
One time after my query, he paused after pulling out his watch and looked at me. “I used to ask my father the same thing after he had checked his watch, and he wouldn’t remember. I never used to understand that.” He chuckled, checked his watch, and told me the time.

On the planter, sometimes I would try to steal a glance away from my flying hands to check our progress down the row. In those moments I would realize that although the planter wheel spun in numbing speed in front of me, we were moving along at a crawl. Uncle Bob kept the tractor choked back, its power reined in to a grumbling snails pace.

One day, walking back to house, I passed the first field we had planted. Green leaves blossomed from the soil where once the brown lump of strawberry plant sat camouflaged. The bright greenness marched in line, row upon row, curving to the horizon. That crazy plan had worked! It was beautiful, an amazing gift, a miracle.

Today I get the news that my Grandpa has gone to his final rest. We will plant his husk of a body in that rocky Pennsylvania ground. And though my tears flow freely, I am not without hope. My Grandpa spent his life raising crops by the grace of God, in the name of His Son, Jesus. And when the time is right, our Son will shine, and my Grandpa will be raised in new life. It will be beautiful beyond imagining, a gift paid for with the blood of the Lamb. A miracle.

“Christ has been raised from the dead. He became the first fruits of those who are asleep. For since death came by man, the resurrection of the dead also came by man. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, then those who are Christ’s, at his coming. Then the end comes, when he will deliver up the Kingdom to God, even the Father; when he will have abolished all rule and all authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy that will be abolished is death.”
I Corinthians 15: 20-26

Alan Rhodes
born April 27, 1921
died September 26, 2007
Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints