Sunday is a Day of Rest

Let me just start off by saying I knew better. Yes, that is a statement that I can make about nearly all my mistakes. I knew better but decided to test my luck. In this case my mistake was working on a Sunday. Earlier this year Dad and I had tried to pick corn on a Sunday and broke the hydraulic cylinder that extends the unloading auger. After that mishap a friend told me, “work on Sunday, fix on Monday”. I guess I was warned but desperate times call for desperate measures.

So back to my latest Sunday experience. We are into November and still have a lot of acres of beans to cut, the weather has not been good, and the forecast looked even worse with a couple of snow chances sprinkled in. It has showered just a little on Saturday but had dried off in the afternoon and the wind picked up during the night. Jennifer and I had planned to go help Tatum celebrate her birthday but when I woke up that morning, I told her I was going to stay home and cut beans.

I had planned on going to church then harvesting but when I went outside and found out the wind was howling out of the north and everything seemed dry, I decided that the proverbial ox was in the ditch and the Good Lord probably would forgive me if I tried to get a couple more hours of harvest in. After all Jesus picked wheat on a Sabbath, so harvesting soybeans was OK, if I didn’t make a habit of it. Right?

With pangs of regret I sent Jennifer off to see Tatum and I set about servicing the combine for what I hoped would be a long day of harvest. Dad checked in with me and asked if I needed help., I told him one of us probably ought to go to church and he reminded me of what usually happened when we did something like this. Sheepishly I agreed that it probably wasn’t the best idea but we both were anxious to get something done.

By nine o’clock I was in the field. The beans may have looked ready but they were tough. The combine growled at me every chance it got, and I worked around the patches of heavy beans laying on the ground, I would come back and get them later. At least that was my plan to come back later and finish them. That moment I decided to get the lighter beans up on the sidehill where the wind was hitting. Anything was progress.

For an hour I inched my way along and gradually it seemed like things were getting better and maybe we would make some real progress. I was feeling good and while I wasn’t smug about my choice to skip a trip to see my daughter and church, I did think I had made the right decision. Then it happened. A bearing I had been babying along finally gave out and as it did there was considerable collateral damage. Enough damage that I was sure I couldn’t fix it in the field. Still I was hopeful that I could preform triage mechanics on it and keep going for the day.

I pulled into the yard and proceeded to unload the beans onto the truck. That was when the drizzle started. The weatherman had not said anything about any precipitation of any kind. In fact, the forecast was for clearing skies, wind and a near perfect day to harvest. That had aided in my decision to stay home originally. I think the exact words were zero chance of rain and a great fall day to get outside. I unloaded as fast as I could and got the truck into the shed and went out to diagnosis what was wrong with the header.

It would have been easier to describe what was right with the header. Things were in bad shape and it didn’t take very long for me to conclude that I was done for the day. Broken parts or not I was getting wet. I slogged my way back home and warmed up leftovers, did I mention our church was having a BBQ dinner that day with homemade pie. So, there I was, barely noon and the day was shot, all because of a bad decision to pick work over church and family.

Soon Dad got home and saw the combine parked by the shop and called me to see if it had gotten too wet to cut. It had but I also had to confess that I had broken down. He paused for a second and said that he figured that would happen. Now I am not sure God is all that concerned whether I harvest on a Sunday and I am pretty sure my calamity was not due to his wrath. I do know that there is a very good reason we hardly ever work on a Sunday and that church and family should always come before work. I guess I just need a refresher course occasionally because I knew better.