The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. (Genesis 2:15 (ESV)
Labor Day weekend is often called the official end of summer. In past years it signaled the start of school. It’s not that way anymore in our state since the schools are air-conditioned now and the legislature mandated a certain number of instruction days. The air conditioning mattered because before that, those classrooms got very warm. Even with all the windows open. You put 30 plus warm little kids in a room and the temperature of the place goes up. The teacher’s temperature generally went up too so the school systems waited until the weather cooled or at least not that many extra hot summer days remained. If the heat rose in September, extra recess time could be given. Things were more relaxed back when and more in the control of the school principal. The mandated instruction days mattered since some days are generally missed due to snow-covered roads making it dangerous to drive the buses in the winter months. Those days that are missed have to be made up and can’t be waved off the way they used to be if an excessive number of days were missed. So they start school early to be sure to get those days in and still get out of school before many June days pass.
In the picture, my husband is showing the grandkids that farming can be fun if you’re the one getting to drive the tractor.
I grew up on a farm. Labor Day was often just that. A day we had to work putting in the crop. When I was a kid, most every farmer in Kentucky raised burley tobacco. Even a small landowner could have a patch of tobacco to help pay his bills and make Christmas happier for his family. My dad not only raised the tobacco he was allowed to grow on his own farm but also raised tobacco on the shares on other farms. (The government assigned quotas for how many acres a farmer could grow based on the amount of land he owned.) That made for plenty of work on Labor Day weekend and most every other September day as the tobacco was always ready to be cut and hung in barns to dry at that time. No picnics and trips to the pool for us. If it wasn’t raining, we were out in the field working. So to be honest, I was always more than glad for school to start and keep me out of the fields at least most of the day.
But hard work never killed anybody. I’m sure you’ve heard that said before. I guess it’s not absolutely true since people have died of heat strokes or various other dangers while working hard. However, most of us survive, and I did for sure. May not have always been happy but I always made it through the busy work times on the farm.
Without hard work, nothing grows but weeds. ~Gordon B. Hinckley
Now I still live on a farm, but the tobacco programs were all cut out long ago. I don’t miss having to work in tobacco. We just have a few beef cows now and my husband cuts hay for them. And I take walks with my dogs through the fields.
I dreamed of working as a writer back when I was a kid too. Actually did scribble away in my notebooks in between school and chores. It wasn’t work then. It was fun and dreams all wrapped up together. Eventually writing did become my work, a completely different kind of work than that I did on the farm. Now I work with my fingers and brain typing out stories. Not on a typewriter like this but a word processor. Hardly any work at all on my fingers these days as keyboards don’t take strong fingers the way those old typewriters used to, but it’s still plenty of work on my brain as I make up characters to live out my stories.
Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work. ~Stephen King
I’m blessed to be able to do work I love. Blessed even more that my stories get published and readers like you read them. But writing a novel isn’t always a walk in the park. Sometimes it’s more like a marathon that has taken a lot of training and endurance. Even labor. But today I celebrate the blessing of work. Work gives a person a certain feeling of accomplishment whether that work is writing the end to a novel or folding a load of laundry or baling a field of hay or whatever job you do. If it’s honest labor then it’s worthwhile.
Pray as though everything depended on God. Work as though everything depended on you. ~Saint Augustine
Do you think work and the ability to do that work is a blessing?
Thanks for reading.