[beautiful.life]
His tiny feet stepped through the cornfield. Toes covered in mud.
“Put this on the pile,” the Farmer’s voice instructed him, handing over the ear of field corn.
He chubby little hands circled the ear. He looked at the pile, then back at the man who was pulling corn from the mud. He smiled and toddled over to the pile of yellow. Plop. The corn bounced against other corn.
I watched from my own row. Watched the little boy learn from the grown boy.
And I thought, This is beauty.
We were picking the leftovers. Gleaning the field. After our time in Haiti, after reading books like Kisses from Katie and More with Less, we couldn’t just walk away from the truckload of field corn that had been knocked down by the chopper. So we gathered up the little one, pulled on boots and tromped through mud to pull out ears of gold. One hour and we had enough to feed our cows tonight.
But we had more than that. We had a chance to influence a little child. A chance to teach about work and being good stewards of the things we have. A chance to be outdoors on one of the last warm days of fall. A chance to listen to the birds and the windmills and the trees. And we had a chance to watch tiny feet toddle through mud.
When the Farmer had to go back to his chopping, I buckled the boy in his car seat and drove the red Ford through the field, picking up the piles. At home, I washed little feet in the sink, changed a diaper, tucked a baby in for his nap, and thanked God that again today, I was privileged enough to be given a glimpse of Him. Because He is, after all, the essence of the beauty I see reflected around me. Thank you, Lord, for letting me see.