Part one of this advent series here
Part two of this advent series here
“Only one. The tractor trailer can’t make it – air compressor not working in this cold.”
Farmer Husband yells the news to me over the drone of the tractor engine.
I watch the small feed truck pull away from the empty auger, crawl down the icy back road.
There won’t be another truck coming. The tractor trailer’s down and out. We’ll have to wait until this one undersized feed truck makes the round trip—from here, twenty minutes due north to the home farm, unload haul of corn into dryer bin, then twenty minutes return trip.
By that time, combine bin, grain buggy bin will both be heaped and waiting.
It will take the feed truck hours of hauling.
The grain buggy will wait hours. The combine will wait hours. And the longer we’re forced to wait in between loads, the stronger that sun burns. The stronger the sun, the packier the snow. And packy, sticky snow wads that combine into a plugged standstill. And that combine’s all we’ve got to free corn imprisoned in leaden white.
My ears fill with chorus of leaves crackling and rustling their weakened cry.
Can we outwrestle winter?
The combine groans on. We’ll fill what we can. Go as long as we can.
The still cold strips coats thin, slips down bare necks. Children and I huddle close, eyes on combine grunting through. I glance up at that determined sun rising higher, pull collar up over nape of neck, rub gloved hands together. I’ll take that glacial air.
Levi pulls at my sleeve. “Can I ask Dad if I can have the combine ride now? Pleease?”
Who can resist that toothy smile? Frigid air seems to darken those freckles splashed across bridge of his nose, those rose-nipped cheeks. He’s got that cap of his pulled low, the one heralding “8” to the world and the new age he claims today.
“I might never have another birthday in my whole life when I can!”
He’s got me there. Never in my lifetime do I hope to see a combine straining through several feet of winter thickened water to bring in the harvest on December 11th. But if we have to… yes, we’d again, we’d always, attempt The Wild Rescue.
“Yes, Levi.” He’s already running. “You may ask Dad!” I laugh the words after him and the cold carries them away. The boy’s in his bliss and his mama smiles.
Coming down the field, plowing through snow, the bin of the combine peaks gold. Kernels saved, gathered in. We’ve got that much again and I’m grateful. I curl frozen toes up in my boots.
When grain buggy and combine both fill to overflowing, we wait for the truck. Farmer Husband scoops up chilled Child.
“You cold right through, Loamy Lou?” He leans into her hat framed face, rubs her nose with his.
Shalom can’t speak, only stiffly nod.
“Wanna sit in the warm tractor cab?”
Another stiff nod, tinged with tugging grin.
And now we wait. Wait in the cold. Wait in corners of less cold. Wait for the small bin of that feed truck. Wait to get the remaining bands of corn whispering lament in wind.
Hang on, corn. We’re coming.
I pull gloves together, blow warm lung air down tunnel between, and think of the waiting weeks of Advent. The waiting for the Christ Coming, waiting for the Wild Rescue.
When He will wrench us free from the leaden prison of our strangling fears, release us from our cutting guilt, emancipate us from our chaining sins.
In the waiting weeks of Advent, we too rustle in the winds of this world, quiet cries for SomeOne to finally enter our frozen hearts, break us free, gather us Home. The anticipation and expectation that sings on every street corner, on every tongue, through the weeks of December is the hope, the refrain, of freedom coming. Freedom coming down.
I look down the rows of corn still shackled in snow.
“Do you want to be delivered? That is the one great question Advent puts to us,” writes Dietrich Bonhoeffer. “Does even a vestige of longing burn in us? If not, what do we want from Advent, what do we want from Christmas?”
So do I.
I nodded when a friend says it: Jesus is not the reason for the season. The deliverance of this sin- bound, aching world is.
And something rumbles down the road.
I turn. Children turn. And chilled faces break into happy cheers, frozen toes into happy jumping! The tractor trailer’s come through!
I clap hands. We can empty bins of corn now and fill bins again now and then again, and maybe, just maybe, pull off December Deliverance.
Farmer Husband heads off with grain buggy, back into field.
I wade out into snow. I want to be close, rooting and praying and down in the depths of it all, as that combine makes that final haul.
I watch him fill. I rub hands in cold, in glee, watch him finally make the last trip down the field.
Will we really make it? It’s almost noon and the sun’s high. The snows drifted deep into those outside eight rows of corn, those outside rows catching the most of winter. Combine’s treaded wheels spin out, grip again, spin out. That blue wisp of engine work deepens to growling black.
“Come on, come on.”
I whisper Advent’s prayer.
And combine grasps, and clutches and grips and seizes stalk after stalk and wrests down the field. I think I can almost see that mile wide smile of birthday boy Levi from combine cab, there beside Farmer Husband’s brother, Uncle John. I’m smiling right back at him. We’re close now.
A bit more, and I can see light through the stalks. Then, there, — can it be?– the last ears of corn feeding in.
This family in the field hoots and hollers and brings down the house and I laugh wonder.
Combine cab door flings open and I can hear Uncle John, Levi, cheering wildly too. This happy morning rings with freedom’s loud, crazy song.
I stand at field corner. The empty field’s corner. I walk the last track out.
I walk the last track out and know we’ll have Christmas now. We’ll gather round the tree wrapped in that brown twist, paper twist that whispers like corn leaves and we’ll listen and we’ll hear the birthday song of Christmas, the one ringing in my ears even now as Christ comes:
“Look up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.” (Lk. 21:28)
It’s drawing near and I long to be delivered.
Related:
Part one here
Part two here
