Wednesday, March 11, 2015
Ploughing a straight furrow
In the old days -days
I still remember from Austria, if you can believe it- farmers plowed with the
use of farm animals. In Austria it was horses, but in other parts of the world
they use(d) oxen. So the animal was given a yoke, and the plow tied to the
yoke, and the farmer would walk behind the plow . The animal would be told to pull, sometimes with the added incentive of a whip, but it was the farmer who needed to steer the plow to make
sure he plowed a straight furrow. Otherwise, once the seed went into the
ground, the rows of corn would look crooked and uneven. In order to do that he
had to keep his sights in front of him, beyond the animal; he needed to know
where he was going.
This is where the image of the Gospels comes in: “No one who
puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God” If
the farmer averts his gaze and looks behind him, he will not accomplish his
goal- he will mess up his field.
But it is not farmers this saying is concerned with, but us.
Farmers would not dream of looking back when they plow: all their attention
is given to what lies ahead. But we, in the middle of daily life, so often look
back. We wonder whether the others are coming along, or we ask what would have
happened if we had taken a different path. And while we spend time looking over
our shoulders, we mess up the task at hand and plow a crooked furrow.
The most common type of looking back comes in the form of
regrets: if only I had studied something different, married a different person,
not done this particular thing, mustered the courage to embark on that
particular project, and now it is too late. Regrets eat away at us and avert
our attention from what we are currently doing. Regrets typically don’t help us
move forward, but keep us in the past, or at least cause us to wonder whether
the life we are living is the best possible one. Advertisement does not help, as
it constantly shows us what exciting thing we could be doing right now.
Chances are we made some bad choices in our past; chances
are we could have seized opportunities but didn't. Once we realize that, let’s
acknowledge it, learn the lesson, and move on. Let’s not keep looking over our
shoulders, wondering whether we are in the wrong line of work: all this does is
make us tentative, inattentive, and bad company. There are times when it does
not matter what fields you are plowing, the important thing is that you are plowing at all. And new opportunities constantly arise which allow us to
adjust our course: chances to make up for lost time, open doors to step
through, grace-filled moments to mend relationships which
we screwed up. But opportunities are always in the future, not in the past: so
look ahead, and keep plowing your field!
# posted by tino @ Wednesday, March 11, 2015 
