Sunday Thoughts

When I was growing up we used to go help my grandpa who had lived on a farm all his life.  My Dad was raised on that farm and we would go help all the time, whenever it was needed.  So in the spring we would go up to help with the sheep.  That would be shearing time and my grandpa would hire in a couple of people to shear his sheep.  My job would be to tie the fleeces into bundles and throw them on a nearby wagon.  I was to gather all the loose wool into the center of the bundle and tie it, making sure it was as clean as possible.

When all the sheep were sheared it was time to get the wool ready to take to market.  We took the wagon to another part of the barnyard, over by the milk shed.  Up high on the side of the milk shed, at the roof line, was a hoop, like a basketball hoop but without a basketball net hanging from it.  Like a basketball hoop only bigger around.  Then they would take a very large burlap bag and fasten it to the hoop by the mouth of the bag so the bag was then hanging from the hoop.  The bag was about eight or ten feet long and the hoop was high enough up the side of the barn that it didn’t touch the ground. 

The first time we did this, after getting the bag all fastened to the hoop, my uncle turned to me and told me to climb up on the barn and lower myself into the bag.  This was my uncle who was a great one for playing jokes and kidding around.  Actually I had a couple of uncles like that.  Anyway, he was one of them so it took him and everyone else there a little while to convince me that I really should do it and that it would be okay.  Even at my best it would have been quite a challenge to get myself back out of a 10 foot bag that was hanging like that, so that there was nothing solid touching the bag.

So there I was, down in the bag and everyone else had the job of taking all the bundles of wool I had tied and tossing them into the bag, like shooting basketball.  I would tamp the bundles into the bottom of the bag, getting it as tight and full as I could, gradually filling the bag until getting out was no problem at all.  The end result was a big bag of tightly packed wool that we would then take to market and sell.

There have been times in my life when I’ve felt I was in situations like those bags, where I had to trust others to help me get out.  Not always the easiest thing to do.  Getting out was still work, in the case of stuffing those bags with wool it was very dirty, smelly work because every fleece was oily and dirty and I had to catch them as they came into the bag above me, pull them down past me, push them below my feet and then tamp them tight so the bag would fill until I could get out.  It was tight work, working in a cramped, confined space, without a lot a fresh air. So here we are, trusting the Lord and those who do his work, to help us get out of situations we keep finding ourselves in.  And at the end of the day we’ve worked hard and are tired and dirty.  But we’re out.  Deliverance.

“But behold, I, Nephi, will show unto you that the tender mercies of the Lord are over all those whom he hath chosen, because of their faith, to make them mighty even unto the power of deliverance.”  (I Nephi 1:20)