The Wildest Rescue ~ Holy Experience

Advent truth from last year... that we were remembering around the table today...

Why do we get stuck with such an ugly tree?”

Malakai wanders through living room, pauses before bare artificial needles.

I turn from stovetop and the stirring of slow bubble of potato and corn chowder, look his way. He’s got his hands stuffed deep in his Wranglers. I agree with that keen 6-year-old eye. Strands of bulbs sag uselessly, a blown one recklessly hijacking the whole string. A cluster of Jesse Tree symbols hang lopsided all on one bough. The youngest child stands about that height.

“I’ve got a brown paper twist that could be untwisted. We could use it as a ribbon, wrapping it around the tree?”

“Okay!” Malakai grins.

Soup simmering, I help Hope, Kai, Levi untwist ribbon. The brown paper crinkles and wrinkles under our fingers.

Hope says what I’m thinking, “It sounds like corn leaves.”

Like corn leaves rustling in the wind. We know that rippling song. The fields sing it all autumn, dry leaves brushing stalks, like crickets stroking their sad harvest anthem. And now eighteen acres of our corn whisper and susurrate in December wind and snow, stalks and leaves talking long into howl of winter nights.

I unravel more twist. It’s dry paper, creased and furrowed, lined like long leaves of corn, rustling gold. I’m decorating the Christmas tree, listening to the plea of corn, harvest yield imprisoned under heavy hand of snow.

We wake the 11th of December. The tree lights twinkle, reflecting in black windows. The thermometer reads -19 C in the biting dark before dawn.

Snow crunches under boots as they walk to the barn under a polar blanket of stars. They’ll begin morning chores before morning comes. Mittened hands burrow deep into pockets looking for leftover warm.

“Today, Dad?” Levi asks as they flick on the barn light, step in from raw cold.

“Chores first.” Farmer Husband glances at the clock hanging on barn office wall. 4:05 a.m. “And then we’ll try.”

Levi grins, rubs hands together. Today, his birthday, we’ll try to wrest the last of the corn from winter’s fist.

Thermometer has to plunge low for snow to blow like sand through combine. Even if temperatures hover well below freezing, snow sticks to combine steel, feeds into that harvest machine and plugs her mouth, her bowels, with winter cemented. We need glacial temps; we’ll go in this cold.

They chore, sows feed, and day creeps.

And when sun inferno burns along the rim, twig and tree ignite and world lights. Jack Frost’s hoary flakes of lace trace up every limb. Every bush blazes.

I unplug the Christmas tree lights.

It’s time to head out, to try. Trucks are lined up for eight o'clock.

When I find him at field’s edge, Farmer Husband’s got a shovel in hand. A snow shovel.

He’s digging out what’s sifted in deepest, so combine can wade in. We laugh, our noses burning in cold, shake our heads at the absurdity of all this.

This crazy rescue mission.

The combine puts in.

Engine growls low. She grinds and strains through December’s deep. A plume of fumed blue wisps from her, hangs in numbed morning.

And icy roads dare corn heaped wagons to try. Trucks cough and choke in this heavy arctic air, sputter frozen; and we wonder what we’re doing out here, out in the deep throes of hibernal winter.

But maybe December’s all about the madness of The Wild Rescue?

I stand on the field’s headlands, snow crusted up to knees, and pray the combine can keep pushing through. Pray that we'll somehow haul the corn up onto glassy roads. Pray that the temperatures stay low enough.

Pray about the absurdity of all this, the craziness of a December harvest and a Christmas tree hanging with the symbols of the wildest story of all: A God pulling on flesh, wading out into the muck of this world, the stench of the barnyard, all to wrench us free from endless winter.

“Only one truck's coming. The tractor trailer can’t make it – air compressor's 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. 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. 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. We’ll fill what we can. Just go as long as we can.

The still cold 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?”

“How many December birthdays -- in my whole life -- will I get a combine ride?"

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 in December.

“Okay.....” 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 I smile.

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 fears, release us from our 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?”

The corn stands in a December freeze waiting for deliverance.

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.

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! Hands clap all round. 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. 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.

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: