Let it rain

Hey Everyone,

I began to write something to send out a couple days ago but it turned a little darker than I had anticipated.(imagine that). So I decided to pass. I know I probably come across as a gloomy gus a lot of the time with my lamenting over the condition of the church. Maybe I am. However, I am also very positive in the long term; it’s getting through the short term that I have a problem with. I have to continually remind my self that “this too shall pass”.

I’d be a liar if I said everything was bad. There is a lot of good stuff going on. I just hope my days don’t run out before some of it starts to bear fruit. Ground prep takes a lot of time, money and energy and it’s a long, long time away from harvest.

It’s easy to forget how much risk a farmer takes in the spring with only an eye to the fall. He doesn’t know how much rain is coming. He doesn’t know what insects are coming. It doesn’t know if diesel fuel will be four dollars a gallon or 40 dollars a gallon. He invests in an uncertain future. He’s not really guessing, at least if he’s a wise farmer, he plans the best he can and hopefully learns to expect the unexpected.

I guess I am trying to be a farmer of words. I am planting words in people’s ears yes, but also on the printed page and the digital page. I made steps yesterday to acquire a plow, a video plow actually, a tool to use in my overall pre-planting phase of word farming. I worked out a deal to produce three promotional videos for my books. I’m pretty excited about it because it encompasses many things that I always dream about but never do and now suddenly the rubber is going to hit the road and I will be put in the position of having to produce something of value.

It actually came about rather suddenly. Tuesday, I was continually fighting a battle. I don’t know about you but some days everything seems like a battle. By the end of the afternoon I found myself driven to prayer. I really had no place else to go. Eventually, I sat down at the computer to do some prep work on publishing. I recently made all my books available for the Kindle reader on Amazon which was a big deal, not to mention time consuming and expensive deal. I’ll be honest I don’t know how farmers justify their initial expenses every spring without a written guarantee from the ground that it will produce in the fall.

Anyway, I started researching marketing tools that Amazon provides its authors and I found that I could develop an author’s page and I could place videos on my page like a commercial to enlighten the masses on what I had to offer. I watched a couple of things on other author’s sites and I thought: I can do that good of a job; and one of these authors had a major publishing deal.

It was then that it felt like the lid on my brain was ripped open and all of these ideas and concepts started bouncing around in my head. I did what I know to do best – I started writing. A couple of hours later I had rough copies of two scripts in my hand or on my computer (both actually). I found myself overwhelmed with joy. I was laughing. The dog and cat were joining me, laughing along with me (if whining and obnoxious meowing can be considered laughter).

Then I remembered a video production guy that I had met a few years ago. I tracked him down on facebook and sent him an email about a possible meeting. Within a couple hours we had set a tentative meeting for the next day.

Now, if you know me or even if you just read this weekly blog of mine regularly you know that I am, what shall we say, unconventional at best, outright bizarre at worst when it comes to my creative bent and these ideas that I have for videos are no exception. The basic concept is to recreate a TV show called The Final Word that is featured in two of the Corpus Christi books. With a stage setting sort of like the Charlie Rose show only It may turn out to be a cross between Charlie Rose and Monty Python. I know we are going to have Flannery O’Connor as a guest on one episode. Brian Whitehead will be the host. And he will be interviewing me on three different shows, one for each book.

I’m excited and scared to death at the same time. Shooting begins around the third week of February and I have got a bunch of stuff to get ready before then. It’s amazing what being able to walk in your calling can do for your sprits. I know my call, it is a multifaceted call but when my feet hit that path it feels like I come alive. I will do whatever it takes to make sure I get to where I need to go.

I will put in the risk of buying seed and pesticide and fertilizer. I will get the tractor tuned up and the plow blades sharpened. I will mend the fences. I will plow the ground. I will plant the seed. And if in the end the rain doesn’t come and the seeds don’t grow I will know that God will receive glory from my labor regardless. He alone is the determiner of whether seed produces fruit, 30, 60, or 100 fold. But seed won't grow if it isn't planted. My job is to do all the prep work needed to get the seed in the ground and trust in him in all things.

The words of Eric Clapton come to mind:
Let it rain, let it rain, let your love rain down on me.
Let it rain, let it rain, let it rain, rain, rain.

Of course I would add: not too much and not too little.

Grace and Peace,
Farmer Brad