April Fuel

The grass has a special emerald glow in April, and this time of year a bit of spring fever makes me miss the farm where I grew up.

My great-grandfather was a bi-vocational preacher long before anyone used the term bi-vocational. Frank Faust preached the gospel wherever he could, but he made most of his living by running a small farm in southern Ohio. Years after Frank's death, I learned to love the land he plowed and the Lord he preached.

Frank named sections of the farm after places in the Bible: Jericho, Joppa, Jerusalem. My favorite was Jericho. I did my share of work there—driving a tractor, baling hay, herding cattle. But even under a blazing summer sun there was a quiet beauty about the place. Blackberries and wildflowers grew along the fencerows, perilously intertwined with poison ivy. Thistles clawed at the legs of my blue jeans when I walked through the tall grass.

At the heart of Jericho, a creek cut through the pasture field. A layer of fossil rocks on the bottom supplied a surface so smooth a young boy could wade in the shallow water without envying any city slicker's swimming pool—except you had to watch out for minnows, crayfish, and snakes. Nearby, the woods were filled with cedars and oaks, a few dogwoods that turned flowery white in the spring, and hickory trees that bore nuts in late summer.

My favorite tree was a large maple my brothers and I nicknamed the Saxophone Tree. Decades ago it had taken root near the creek. At first it grew downward, bending several feet over the creek bank. Then just a foot or two above the water the tree trunk turned back toward the sky and grew straight up. The tree indeed was shaped like an enormous saxophone—yet another wonder in a wonderful place.

On the farm, it wasn't unusual to see a hawk fly overhead, a wild yellow canary, a hummingbird, or a bright red cardinal. A couple of times I saw an owl. Our farm pond was home to catfish, bluegill, bass, muskrats, and turtles. A half mile from the nearest house, Jericho was anything but empty—or silent. Crickets chirped by night; and by day, woodpeckers tapped, mosquitoes buzzed, and bullfrogs belly-flopped into the creek when I came near. Jericho was a popular residence for squirrels, chipmunks, butterflies, and groundhogs. There were skunks, foxes, rabbits, and an occasional deer.

In retrospect, that Ohio farm was more than a place where my family planted a vegetable garden and fields of corn, soybeans, and wheat. Without realizing it, I grew up in a veritable zoo without cages, surrounded by forms of life too numerous to count. Some say life on planet earth is a lucky evolutionary accident, the result of random, impersonal causes: a purposeless big bang, a fortuitous lightning strike in a chemical-laden ocean. I never would have believed that as a young boy, and I don't believe it now. My Sunday school teachers told me God created the heavens and the earth, he designed living creatures to reproduce after their kinds, and he made man in his image. Their explanation made good sense—and it still does.

Today I'm many years and miles removed from the farm where I grew up. But on warm spring days I still daydream about a place called Jericho that fueled my dreams and fed my faith.

Call it spring fever if you want, but it makes me think about Heaven . . . and wonder if the grass will be even greener on the other side . . . and look forward to telling a great-grandpa I never met, "Thanks for passing along a special farm and a special faith."