By

Howard Coop

The home of my childhood and youth was on a poor farm on the north side of Hegira Road in southeastern Cumberland County just a few miles north of the Tennessee border. During the first 17 years of my life, I spent many days working hard on that old farm. I was grubbing bushes, plowed rocky fields, chopped briers and weeds, and did whatever else was assigned to me.

Each spring, the soil was prepared and seeds were planted.  Then, weeds were chopped and crops were cultivated. After several weeks of much hard work, the crop was “laid by.”  

While we waited for harvest time, I became involved in other tasks that my father assigned to me. During that interval of waiting, there was nothing that I, or anyone else, could do to make a difference in the crop to be harvested. No amount of worrying, fretting over what might have been, or wishing for something else to happen had any bearing whatever on the harvest. Israelmore Ayivor put it in these words, “Never expect chance to solve your problems.” Those things will not improve, rush, or delay the harvest. My joy had been done. All that I could do was wait.  Then, when the crop was ripe, it could be, and was, harvested. 

While toiling on those rocky hills and in those fertile hollers, I learned an important lesson about life: Faithfully do faithfully the task that is assigned and wait for the outcome. That is all that is required or expected, and that is all that is productive. No amount of worrying and fretting will change the situation or influence the outcome. It is work that produces results. A long time ago it was put this way: “Let us not become weary in doing well, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.” Just do the necessary work, and you can, with confidence, wait for a harvest.