So, God Made a Framer

I just got home from watching the Super Bowl at my good friends' house, and after what looked to a bit of a snoozer after the first half, the 49ers just about pulled out an exciting win at the very end.

Alas, it wasn't to be...

Regardless, there were many fun and creative television adds this year, but the Dodge RAM Truck/Paul Harvey "So God Made a Farmer" commercial blew me away!

According to TheBlaze.com, the speech was given at the 1978 Future Farmers of America convention.  (A full audio version of the speech can be found HERE) The full text of the speech is listed below. Items in bold blue were sections omitted from the commercial.

    And on the eighth day, God looked down on his planned paradise and said I need a caretaker- So God made a Farmer

    God said I need somebody willing to get up before dawn, milk the cows, work all day in the field, milk cows again, eat supper then go to town and stay past midnight at a meeting of the school board – So God made a Farmer

    [I need somebody with arms strong enough to wrestle a calf and yet gentle enough to deliver his own grandchild; somebody to call hogs,tame cantankerous machinery, come home hungry, have to await lunch until his wife's done feeding visiting ladies, then tell the ladies to be sure and come back real soon, and mean it - So God made a Farmer]

    God said I need somebody willing to sit up all night with and newborn colt, and watch it die, then dry his eyes and say maybe next year. I need somebody who can shape an axe handle from a persimmon sprout, shoe a horse with a hunk of car tire, who can make a harness out of hay wire, feed sacks and shoe straps, who at planting time and harvest season will finish his forty hour week by Tuesday noon and then, paining from tractor back, will put in another 72 hours – So God made a Farmer

    [God had to have somebody willing to ride the ruts at double speed to get the hay in ahead of the rain, and yet stop in midfield and race to help when he sees first smoke from a neighbor's place - So God made a Farmer]

    God said I need somebody strong enough to clear trees and heave bales, yet gentle enough to wean lambs and pigs and tend to pink combed pullets; who will stop his mower for an hour to splint the broken leg of a meadowlark.

    It had to be somebody who’d plow deep and straight and not cut corners; somebody to seed, weed, feed, breed, and rake and disk and plow and plant and tie the fleece and strain the milk and replenish the self-feeder and a hard week’s work with a five-mile drive to church.

    Somebody who would bale a family together with the soft, strong bonds of sharing; who would laugh and then sigh, and then reply with smiling eyes when his son says he want to spend his life doing what dad does – So God made a Farmer

Wow...

First of all, the photography was absolutely stunning, but coupled with Paul Harvey's flawless narrative, this was the best two minutes of television I might have seen in a VERY long time. It was absolutely brilliant!

Paul Harvey was known to be a man of great faith and what struck me most about the poem in the commercial, is how the generic "farmer" so eloquently reflected the attributes of a Goldy man and how we should walk with the Lord.

We are to be caretakers of the land, hard-working, tending to our children and our family's needs, be grateful and loving husbands, strong, yet gentle, a good neighbor, creative resourceful, not ones to cheat or take shortcuts, nurturing, I could go on and on... The narrative really touched a sympathetic nerve with me.

I guess the point that was driven home, is that the farmer is a metaphor for us as men and women in Christ. No matter what our occupation, whether it be in the fields of the mid-west, or in the heart of downtown Santa Barbara, we all need to think of ourselves as lowly, humble, farmers, doing our work humbly and faithfully for the Lord while caring for our family and the neighbors in our community.

After all, isn't that what he created us to do?