Well, I have finally taken the plunge and decided to start a blog on life in the Estey home.
If you want to click off, now is the time!!!!

Normally a woman who tackles just about anything with gusto and delight (other than toilet cleaning) I have to be honest and say I have avoided this for many years. We have lived down in SW MN for over 5 years, and while many family and friends have asked what our life is like now, it is easier for me to pick up the phone and call them, than it is to think of doing something like this!

Perhaps I am an old-fashioned girl at heart and wonder where all of this techo-stuff is going in the near future. But so many of you have asked, and so, I bow to the masses and dig in..

Today as I made a short trip (3 hours round trip) to the big town “nearby” to pick up my sister at the bus station, I was pleasantly surprised to see the early snow and rain we have been experiencing in no way damaged the beautiful fall colors on the many groves of trees that we passed. The area we live in is rolling prairie, with many different kinds of trees, field after field of corn and soybeans, and giant windmills that stand tall against the sky. It is a land full of history–farms that have been in families for 5 or more generations, cows feeding along the fences everywhere you look, and especially this time of year, farmers out bringing in the crops before the snow falls. I admit it, I am like a child when it comes to this time of year. I have been known to be so excited seeing a combine or tractor out in the field harvesting that I will yell out “Look! My side! My side!” only then to realize that I am the only one in the car.

So I look. 🙂

Today as everyone was chattering around me, a recent conversation was rolling around in my mind…one I had with a friend who farms for a living. He was talking about how it was almost not worth his time to harvest his crop, unless he held on to it, because his cost was almost half of what he would earn, and with seed prices, gas for his harvesting vehicles, etc, he would hardly break even. So he was thinking that perhaps he would just harvest everything and store it, waiting for a better profit for his time and effort.

The reason this conversation stuck in my mind was not because of his predicament…but mine.

I am just like that man in many ways.

Too often I weigh the cost of what something will bring me in light of the cost I will put out in doing it, or achieving it. Friendships, housework, you name it, I am thinking in that light.

 

Shameful, and a little embarassing I will admit, but in an effort to be honest, I am letting you know, deep inside, that I am often at war with myself on doing what I know to be right instead of balking at it because of the cost to me.

I looked at the leaves, the windmills, the beauty of a fallen world as it gets ready for the winter, and thought to myself—Jesus never counted the cost when he did what he did for me. He didn’t calculate his risks, or hold out for a better model, never added up the cost of my ransom versus his painful and gruesome death.
Instead He chose to do what He knew He needed to do, no matter the cost. And rather than regretting that, or putting strings on His love, He offers it freely, and abundantly, and more besides.

How blessed I am!

So what is my vow, my prayer, this week, as I watch all change around me and the crops go in.

 “Lord, make me available, fruitful,
knowledgeable, and sensitive to those that need me,
no matter the cost.
ÂHelp me to step in trusting You,
no matter what risks I am taking, because You are behind me, before me, and surrounding me.
You lead me to the harvest Lord, and show me what I am to do. Help me to come to a place where I remove all thought of myself from the picture and just begin to see my life as an extension of Your hand to others, just as your extend Your hand to me daily as I need you.”

This farmer friend does what he does to make a profit–it is his business and his food on the table for his children. I admire so many of these men down here who have taken hit after hit the last couple of years in grain prices, then on the hog market. He is doing what he needs to do to run his business.

My business is the people God calls me to serve. And there is no place in that calling to calculate the cost of what it will take from me, because His strength is sufficient in my weakness.

I am thinking of Paul when he said “Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took a hold of me. Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it, but on thing I do: Forgetting what is behind, and straining toward what is ahead I press on to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.” (Phil 3:13)

So pray for me, and I will pray for you, that we forget the cost and lose our lives only to find them in the plan God has for us.

Blessings to you and yours,

Heather of The Welcoming House Blog