Custodians --- Just for a while

I grew up in the countryside of Wiltshire, which is one of England's great farming counties, and so it's not that surprising that one of my literary 'heroes' was the farmer/broadcaster/author A. G. Street. I often pick up one of his books which contain so much about farming methods that prevailed when I was a boy. He speaks of times when farms were communities rather than the modern lonely places often being run by a farmer with the help of his wife and perhaps a part-timer. I remember Harvest Time especially, when the farm was alive with helpers as we all worked hard to get the harvest in before rain came and brought all the problems that it was capable of.


One of the lessons in life that I learned from A. G. Street was that we never own the land. We are merely privileged to be the custodians of it for a while, charged with caring for it and improving it. Farmers vary in the way that they carry out this duty of care. Some discharge it so well that the land rewards them handsomely, whilst others stand guilty of neglect. Many today, with the financial constraints on their hiring of the necessary labour, fall in between, not by choice but by circumstance. Whatever the position there is one constant and eternal truth, and that is that they will never own that for which they are responsible, yet they must do all that they can to ensure its perpetual fertility.


It's rather like everything else that we think we own. We don't really! We might own the use of something for a while, even for the duration of our lifetimes, however long or short that may be, but when God deems that our life-span is over we have to give up our ownership, however firmly we've gripped onto it.


A few years ago I was helping a friend --- a retired antique dealer --- to move into her new home. One afternoon whilst I was fixing some shelves up in the hall and she was taking another helper back to their home, I heard a tremendous crashing sound. I rushed to the lounge, not knowing what to expect, but everything was okay. It was when I opened the door to the passageway that led to the bedrooms that I discovered the cause of the noise. A whole wall of shelving that had been badly put up by a previous 'helper' had collapsed and the contents of the very full shelves lay strewn across the floor. It was TOTAL DEVASTATION! On close inspection it was easy to see what had happened for the screws that had been used to fix the brackets to the wall were only half the length needed, and the weight of everything had done its worst.


Lying there in the hall, amongst the general melee of books, was the remains of a 16th Century glass bottle, some Victorian china and a few other antique remnants. I was HORRIFIED! How would my friend react when she returned home? How could I break the news to her in the gentlest way?


I soon found out, for it was not too long before she returned home. When I took her through to see what had happened do you know what she said? I'll certainly never forget it, for it taught such a valuable lesson. She simply said, "Oh well, I've enjoyed having those things for a while, but I guess that their time with me was over". Then she went to make a cup of tea!