THE WEATHERED OLD BARN
A stranger came by the other day with an offer that set me to
thinking.
He wanted to buy the old barn that sits out by the highway. I
told him right off he was crazy. He was a city type, you could
tell by
his clothes, his car, his hands, and the way he talked. He said
he was
driving by and saw that beautiful barn sitting out in the tall
grass and
wanted to know if it was for sale. I told him he had a funny
idea of
beauty. Sure, it was a handsome building in its day. But then,
there's
been a lot of winters pass with their snow and ice and howling
wind. The
summer sun's beat down on that old barn till all the paint's
gone, and
the wood has turned silver gray. Now the old building leans a
good deal,
looking kind of tired. Yet, that fellow called it beautiful.
That set me
to thinking. I walked out to the field and just stood there,
gazing at
that old barn. The stranger said he planned to use the lumber
to line the
walls of his den in a new country home he's building down the
road. He
said you couldn't get paint that beautiful. Only years of
standing in the
weather, bearing the storms and scorching sun, only that can
produce
beautiful barn wood. It came to me then.
We're a lot like that, you and I.
Only it's on the inside that the beauty grows with us. Sure we
turn silver
gray too... and lean a bit more than we did when we were young
and full of
sap. But the Good Lord knows what He's doing. And as the years
pass He's
busy using the hard wealth of our lives, the dry spells and the
stormy
seasons, to do a job of beautifying our souls that nothing else
can
produce. And to think how often folks holler because they
want life easy!
They took the old barn down today and hauled it away to
beautify a
rich man's house. And I reckon someday you and I'll be hauled
off to
Heaven to take on whatever chores the Good Lord has for us on
the Great
Sky Ranch. And I suspect we'll be more beautiful then for the
seasons
we've been through here... and just maybe even add a bit of
beauty to our
Father's house. May today there be peace within you.
May you trust God that you are exactly where you are meant to be.
- - Author Unknown
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