Where Miracles Are A Lifestyle

“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another.  By this all men will know you are My disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:34-35).

Hey Gang:  Many folks think that me and my bride are rather weird.  Why?  Because periodically we drive to Shipshewana, Indiana for breakfast.  Why is that so weird?   It is more than 150 miles from home.   Shipshe, as it is commonly known by the horse auction folks, is rated on or near the bottom of the best place to take your teen aged kids for a vacation.    It is an Amish-Mennonite community that lives and breath’s the ethics and morals of faith in God.

I had a wonderful privilege as a young man prior to entering the military, to live in Lancaster, Pennsylvania which is also an Amish community and drove a bulk milk truck and picked up milk at fifty- three Amish Farms.  I learned to love the Amish and even wished, at times, that I had been born into an Amish family.  In my lifetime I have seen love within people, love within families and love within neighbors, but one day I saw a depth of love that truly was beyond my understanding. 

One of the farmers had lost his barn to fire and, in Amish language, that means you basically lost everything.  The animals, their farming equipment, their stored crops for the winter, their buggy and horses.  In other words, as they stood on the ashes of that barn, they were standing on their very existence.   No worry, just call the insurance man, right?  Not so, Amish trust only on God for their existence.  Maybe the Salvation Army or Red Cross, how about the Social Services.  No, we trust only in God. 

As I was driving to pick up at my first milk stop, I began to run into horse-drawn black buggies filled with Amish families- each pulling trailers filled with tools and supplies.    They came from the East and West and from the North and the South and, as they arrived, each man and woman and child seemed to know where they belonged and what they should do.

I wish I had the time and space to give you a total picture of what happened that day. As I was returning to the dairy, after my last pick up, I went out of the way to see and watch for a while.  I was absolutely amazed because, in the ten-hour period, they had totally framed the barn and had the roof on and shingled.  Three days later the finish carpenters were wrapping up their odds and ends when a second buggy parade began to arrive.  This one had a calf and another a liter of pigs.  Amos, down the road brought a dozen or so chickens.

But it did not stop there.   Trailer loads of equipment began arriving, a neighbor just happened to have an extra horse that he was fixen’ in sell, which fit perfectly with the buggy that another neighbor gave to the family.  Within five days the barn had been totally restored, the stock had been replacde and the equipment needed to continue farming was all in barn.   What I saw happening that week was “Sacrificial Love in action.

Each time I hear of someone being burned-out and losing everything, I think of those days at the Miller farm when their barn burned down destroying everything, and, six days later every iota of what had been lost, including a barn full of food for the animals was replaced.  O, it would be sinful if I did not mention what I felt was the key to that barn raising – it was the willingness of the community to “lay down their life for their brother and sister who were going through a very tough wilderness”. 

The key!  Did you ever see a prayer circle that encompassed a hundred or more?  Old folks that had to be held up, mommas with babies, little ones, big ones all tied together hand and hand and the patriarchs taking turns praying for safety, blessings and that before this day was over, God would get the glory.  One last point, there were folks there who were too old and feeble to work. They sat in chairs by the barn and provided expertise and quality control, but their main purpose for being there was to provide insurance – they were the prayer-covering of the project.

When I was in my growing-up years there was a program on radio called “Can You Top This?”  You have to be older than dirt to recall hearing this program.  It was a kind of story-telling program where people told of experiences they had in their lives, each was more profound than the one that was described before their turn came.  The barn-raising was and continues to be a fabulous example of laying your life down for your brother, but several years ago I heard of a tragic event that happened to seven families that were in the same area where I picked up milk.

A deranged individual, with gun in hand, entered an Amish school and shot and killed seven six and seven-year old Amish children and then turned the gun on himself in front of the rest of the kids in the class and blew his head off.   And then the miracle began to surface.  As per usual, the media showed up with cameras in hand and ready to report every iota of the gory details of this tragic event. They were astounded to not find hatred and anger but mommies and daddies who had just lost the most precious thing they had in all the earth - a child-  but found no hatred and condemnation.

You see the Amish look at such tragedies in a far different way than most of us more civilized folks.  They believe God made a plan for each and every individual who draws breath; each has a beginning, an in- between story, and an ending here on earth and then life truly begins when we are face to face with our Lord in that place He went to prepare for His children.  These folks had invited the bride and mother and dad of the deranged gunman to come and be with them, when they laid their children into the ground.    No hatred, no anger, they were living out what John 13:34-35 had been ingrained in their hearts.

And that, my friends, is why we are experiencing the Destruction of Love in our nation.  God, who is love, who laid down His life for us to break the bondage of sin in our lives, who died on a hideous cross, who rose again and ascended to where He sits at the right hand of the Father right now, and will come soon and take His children to that place that He talked about to the thief on the cross,
“Today you will be with me in paradise.” Remember the song, “Put your hands in the hands of the One who stilled the waters”?

“Little children, let us not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and truth” (I John 3:18).

Blessings,

Gramps