Sun and shield

So yesterday there were some pretty fierce storms around the country.  We were under a tornado warning maybe 2 times in the morning.  We didn't have any tornadoes thankfully, but we did get some pretty heavy rain.  In about a 2 hour span we got about 0.9 in. of rain.  And we were really hoping to avoid a lot of rain since it is time to harvest the rye.

And Wednesday and Thursday everyone was busy cutting and spreading out the rye, but yesterday all that work came to a stand-still because of this:

Then more rain came.

And it made me realize just how much the future of this farm, of our lives depends on God.  We can plan things out for how we want them to go and plan for success, but there are a lot of things that are completely out of our control, like the weather.  The rye was all cut and ready to be chopped, but now we have to wait a little longer because it got wet.

I was reading from Psalm 84 this morning and thought verse 11 was especially appropriate for this situation:

"For the Lord God is our sun and our shield.  He gives us grace and glory.  The Lord will withhold no good thing from those who do what is right."

So we do need the Lord to be our sun to dry out the fields and the rye, and we need him to be our shield, to guard against break-downs of equipment or more damage to the rye.  It is God who is in control, and he has the power to dry out our fields so that we can have another year of bountiful harvest.  He will provide and we hope that he will withhold no good thing from this farm.