Читать книгу Wheat Fields - Joseph A. Byrne - Страница 3

On one level, Wheat Fields is a story about the social trauma of change, of revolution. In this case, it is the story of the changes brought on by the introduction of the mobile combine harvester. The combine would replace the stationary threshing machine, which had been in common usage on the farms for many years now. Threshing was the accepted means of harvesting wheat.

Replacement of the threshing machine also displaced the need for large workforces on the farms that, heretofore, were needed to harvest wheat. This displacement caused severe strain on the known and common practices of the farm, especially the need for large families to bring in the harvest. It also lessened the need for cooperation among farm neighbours who, heretofore, had to pool labour and help each other as a matter of survival.

On another level, the story is about the very meaning of life. Of particular interest is the concept of God. How does God enter into our lives? How does God communicate with us? Do we have the skill to recognize situations where God is trying to communicate with us? Would we recognize Divine intervention even if we saw it happening?

The book postulates the best chance to encounter God is in the ordinary circumstances of life. It is in the ordinary, among the poor and oppressed, that we would expect to find God. Put another way, would we expect that God would be primarily present or concerned where a person is seeking to make their twelfth, or fourteenth billion dollars?

The book demonstrates real examples of Divine intervention in a very ordinary occupation, namely, wheat farming. The question to us is this. When God appears in our lives, or offers us help, do we respond to it? An even more basic question is whether we even recognize that God is there offering to help us.

In this respect, the ability to recognize the intervention of God—yes, even the presence of God, is a skill that needs to be learned and honed. It is a bit like learning a new language, or even learning to decipher an extinct language, trying to understand the words and symbols used.

In order to begin to understand the process, it is necessary to understand the use of terms like supernatural. That word seems to convey the premise of a distant God, of a mysterious God. The presence of God in our lives should rather be expected by us as something natural. It should be expected as though it was a natural function of life, much the same as breathing is accepted as natural. We should accept that God is there. We should expect that God will become visible to us. We should expect to find God in the midst of our good works.

How hard should we work at recognizing the presence of God; the real presence, not the imagined or wished-for presence? The answer, of course, is that we should simply work hard in our good works. This is our invitation to God, our life-long prayer.

Does God not call on us to be the very manifestation of good in the world? In this sense, one can substitute the word good for God. Can’t we choose to be the force of good in our own lives and in the lives of others? Is it not natural science that we can be the personification of God as good in the world? Can this not happen, through our work in the very ordinary circumstances of the world?

Yet this book has no intention of being preachy. It does not even wish to mention words such as God, or Divine intervention.

I invite you to enjoy a very good story, and to celebrate the extraordinary dimensions of life that are demonstrated both here and in the very ordinary circumstances of your own lives.

May you find peace and happiness in your own lives, and may you find it even in the very hard throws that life can give. And one further wish for you is that you may live to see God.