THE BARN
A stranger came by the other day with an offer that set me to thinking. He wanted to buy
the old barn that sits out by the highway. I told him right off he was crazy. He was a
city type, you could tell by his clothes, his car, his hands, and the way he talked. He
said he was driving by and saw that beautiful barn sitting out in the tall grass and
wanted to know if it was for sale. I told him he had a funny idea of
beauty.
Sure, it was a handsome
building in its day. But then, there's been a lot of winters pass with their snow and ice
and howling wind. The summer sun's beat down on that old barn till all the paint's gone,
and the wood has turned silver gray. Now the old building leans a good deal, looking kind
of tired. Yet, that fellow called it beautiful.
That set me to thinking. I
walked out to the field and just stood there, gazing at that old barn. The stranger said
he planned to use the lumber to line the walls of his den in a new country home he's
building down the road. He said you couldn't get paint that beautiful. Only years of
standing in the weather, bearing the storms and scorching sun, only that
can produce beautiful barn
wood.
It came to me then. We're
a lot like that, you and I. Only it's on the inside that the beauty grows with us Sure we
turn silver gray too ... and lean a bit more than we did when we were young and full of
sap. But the Good Lord knows what He's doing. And as the years pass He's busy using the
hard wealth of our lives, the dry spells and the stormy
seasons, to do a job of
beautifying our souls that nothing
else can produce. And to
think how often folks holler because they want life easy!
They took the old barn
down today and hauled it away to beautify a rich man's house. And I reckon someday you and
I'll be hauled off to Heaven to take on whatever chores the Good Lord has for us on the
Great Sky Ranch.
And I suspect we'll be
more beautiful then for the seasons we've been through here ... and just maybe even add a
bit of beauty to our Father's house.
May there be peace within
you today.
May you trust God that you
are exactly where you are meant to be.
"I believe that
friends are quiet angels who lift us to our feet when our wings have trouble remembering
how to fly.