Love of Land

My parents' farms in our home province never grew on me. Not even with the happy memories of my growing up years with four siblings: we would watch crops being harvested, roll on haystacks or run around fields, and feast on newly roasted corn.

After my parents passed on and I had a family of my own, I washed my hands off those lands even if the onus fell on me, being the eldest. For one, I can’t grow anything, not even weeds I plant on purpose.

I abdicated and told my younger sister (who has gone back to live in our old home), I would go along with whatever she decides. But now, she is getting on in age, too, and is busy with church pursuits.

Thankfully, our youngest brother, Dave, has taken up the cudgels and recently supervised with his wife the planting of corn in one parcel and rice in another. He documented for us the corn growth process through photos and e-messages that my mind punctuated with exclamation points.

And now comes grace galore. It is harvest time!     

And I suddenly miss roasting and eating newly harvested corn (but not the land).

Only someone like Dave who treasures the great outdoors can watch any crop grow from sowing to reaping.

He would have done our parents proud.

As he awaits his rice harvest, I wrote Dave that whatever share I have from the produce (two other siblings echoed my sentiments) would go to the local church fund (Project Nehemiah it is called) so the parsonage could be built on another land that my grandparents bequeathed for the sole purpose of serving the Lord, Who in fact and in truth, owns every land anybody will ever till or “own.”

“For the LORD your God is bringing you into a good land—a land with brooks, streams, and deep springs gushing out into the valleys and hills; a land . . . where bread will not be scarce and you will lack nothing . . .” Deuteronomy 8: 7-9 (NIV)