The Tractor Pull

Summer is on the way in spite of the long snowy cold wet spring. Aren’t you glad seasons change? I just wish I could finally teach myself how to enjoy the season I am in. I don’t think I am alone not being satisfied with the right now. Oh, once in a while you will hear someone say, it is a beautiful day isn’t it! But let that temperature rise a little or fall a little and then what do you hear?  You see if we let our surroundings determine how we are feeling, we are doomed to negativity, griping and complaining.

Have you ever been in a hurry to visit a person who is complaining about how bad they have it? Then why do most of us do it then? Do we just not want people to not want to be around us? Have you ever been able to change the weather by complaining about it? Have you ever made yourself feel better by grumbling about something or somebody?  Then why do we do it then?

The fact is the majority of us are whiners and complainers. This is good for the country music business because we seem to like to hear how bad their lives are.  Poor poor pitiful me, now be honest, when you read those words couldn’t you hear Linda Ronstadt singing them?  So are we just wired up for negativity or what? 

I mentioned summer is almost here, county fairs in the rural areas also arrive each summer.  These fairs give the kids a chance to show their animals and projects they have been working on over the winter.  Lights will be flashing and crowds of people gather to walk around playing the games at the carnivals.  Music shows bring in the latest stars, oh the excitement and the fun!

To get to these events you usually wait in traffic what seems like hours.  To park in some pasture where you can walk toward a gate where you can stand in line for a while until you finally reach some guy with an apron on that you can give a lot of money to, in return for a ticket or sometimes a mark on the back of your hand.  I don’t think this is the mark of the beast. Anyway then you to walk around a wide assortment of people, most of them you have never seen before, nor will you likely ever see again. Some of them you do know and are glad to see and some of them you know and wish you hadn’t seen. You know who I am talking about.  After you have exhausted yourself looking at chickens, rabbits, pigs, calves, sheep, carnival stuff, people that have been in the beer garden too long, you finally find your way over to the tractor pulling contest.  Now it is here that you find the answer to why we are all complainers. 

You see as you watch tractor after tractor and boredom starts to set in you happen to notice the sled and how it works.  The further down the track it goes, the heavier it becomes.  And when the tractor no longer has the momentum and power to move the sled anymore they stop, unhook and measure how far the sled had been pulled.  I noticed that when the tractors reach the end of their pull they sputtered and coughed out their final puffs of smoke and came to a stop. 

The lies that Satan continually hurls at us every day can be like weight to that sled, the further down life’s track  we go the harder it seems to get. And when we are just about out of power we sputter and cough out complaints about our circumstances.  When we buy into the lies of the devil it will eventually cause us to lose steam in our lives.

But be of good cheer little children because in Christ Jesus there is now no condemnation. We live in this world but we are not of this world. We are covered by the blood of Jesus and are overcomers. You are the righteous of God in Christ Jesus who has overcome the world and as Christ is so are you.  So unhook from the sled of lies and the devil and keep pressing to the mark of victory in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior.     

Out of the auger,

Dennis Cappel

Hope Givers Working Ranch