It seems that each day I open my emails, someone has sent me a good story with a tremendous ending. Sharing these stories on occasion allows me to new insight to people and their plights and/or pleasures.
The other day I received a story about an older couple that continued to live on a farm outside the hustle and bustle of city life. Their children were grown and moved on to the faster pace living and really couldn’t understand why their parents wouldn’t want to do the same.
On a visit home one day, one of the children began reminiscing about his youth and walked around the farm with his parents. They spoke about the great gardens grown in the past and all of the animals they have had. The family had been in the horse business for many years but had slowed down quite a bit from showing and selling their horses.
One of the older horses was still among the younger horses in the barn and the son posed the question, “Why do you keep the older horse? She is not a productive animal anymore. Sell her or getting rid of her would give you some extra money that you probably need.”
Without hesitation the older farmer looked up and said, “We keep her because of love. Nothing else but pure love.”
That evening after the son had gone back to the city and the farmer and his wife had gone to bed, the farmer was awakened by the smell of smoke. He looked out the window to see that the barn was on fire.
He couldn’t get inside the barn and his greatest fear was that he had lost all his horses to the fire. He told his wife there was nothing they could do but to praise God for He had blessed them over the years. He told her, “let’s go to the big old tree on the hill and say our prayers there.”
As the older couple, during the coldness of the night, trudged their way to the hill so they could talk with God under the tree where they had been many times before. As they were approaching the tree, they could see shadows on the hill next to the tree and when they arrived, they found the older horse had led the younger ones out of the barn when the fire started.
The older horse had been to the tree with the couple before and her innate wisdom allowed her to take the younger generation of horses to this same spot when trouble approached them.
Life is like a fire to some of our younger generation today, just as it was when all our older folks were young. Sometimes we get into situations and don’t know which way to turn and then, through the wisdom of an older generation, we see solutions that can ease our problems. Just about every solution will lead us back to the God that has guided so many generations across this earth.
In most every situation we will find our problems are when we leave God on the outside and try to fix them ourselves.
The most valuable resources and the Godliest people will rank among the senior citizens of today. Be smart, pay attention to them, and invoke on their wisdom plus their trust in the Lord.
