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| THE WEATHERED BARN |
~Author Unknown
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 today there be peace within you.
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." |
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