The Farmer's Fire

Can comfort cost too much?

The sluggard does not plow in the autumn; he will seek at harvest and have nothing.

Proverbs 20.4

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

There once was a farmer with a fine warm house and a fine wide field.

One morning the farmer woke up. It was time to plough the fields and scatter the good seed on the land, to drive his train of oxen across the soil and prepare for next year's harvest. It would be hard work and the farmer wasn't much looking forward to it.

He sat at his table, eating hot porridge and looked outside. The early frosts clung to the window and the field sparkled with a thin white coat of ice. Cold. He could just imagine it. On a day like today, it didn't much matter how you wrapped up. Hats and scarves and gloves and coats and overcoats and undercoats and none of it would make a bit of difference as the cold wind bit into his cheeks and chilled his bones stiff.

He put another log in the fire and stoked it with an old poker. The flames caught the wood and flared up. Warmth filled the little house and the farmer sat in an old armchair by the flickering flames, feeling the warm heat sink into him.

This was much better than being out there. The field did need ploughing, but did it have to be today?

The whole week was ahead of him, and surely the next day the sun would rise a little warmer. Or the next.

The next day came, and the next, and the next. And never did the sun rise warmer. If anything, the nights got longer and the days got colder and the farmer's fire stayed warm. He sat by that fire all through the long lonely autumn. There never was a happier, comfier farmer than him.

One day the farmer looked out his window and it was winter.

"The ground would be too hard now anyway," he thought.

And all through the winter he sat as well. The fire burned, and the logs crackled in the hearth. The flames danced all the winter through as the farmer sat warm and well.

Spring was a cold one that year, and by then the farmer was used to his old chair and his warm fire and even going outside to fetch more wood to feed the flames felt like a little too much of a chill.

Harvest came on a beautiful sunny day, and the farmer stepped out at last.

The warm air was pleasant, fresh after the smoky house with the roaring flames. He smiled, and walked across to the field.

But the field was bare.

Father, give us the mind of Christ who endured even the cross to do your will. Help us to never let comfort keep us from the work you have given us to do.

Author's note: The ESV renders the Hebrew "in the autumn" but Kidner suggests that the KJV has a better sense of it: "The sluggard will not plow by reason of the cold." It's the discomfort of the cold weather which puts the sluggard off ploughing at the appointed time. Hence the inspiration for this fable.