"Big Poppy" Returns Home

Years of standing in the weather,
bearing the storms and scorching sun.
Only THAT can produce beautiful barn wood.

A stranger came by the other day with
an offer that set me to thinking.
He wanted to buy the old barn that sits
out by the highway.
I told him right off he was crazy.
He was a city type, you could tell by his clothes,
his car, his hands, and the way he talked.
He said he was driving by and saw that beautiful barn
sitting out in the tall grass and wanted to know
if it was for sale.

I told him he had a funny idea of beauty.
Sure, it was handsome in it's day.
But then, there's been a lot of winters pass
with their snow and ice and howling wind.
The summer sun's beat down on that old barn
til all the paints gone,
and the wood has turned silver gray.
Now the old building leans a good deal,
looking kind of tired.
Yet, that fellow called it beautiful.
That set me to thinking.

I walked out to the field and just stood there,
gazing at that old barn.
The stranger said he planned to use the lumber
to line the walls of his den
in a new country home he's building down the road.
He said you couldn't get paint that beautiful.
Only years of standing in the weather,
bearing the storms and scorching sun.
Only THAT can produce beautiful barn wood.

It came to me then. We're a lot like that, you and I.
Only it's on the inside that the beauty grows with us.
Sure we turn silver gray too...and lean a bit more
than we did when we were young and full of sap.

But the Good Lord knows what He's doing.
And as the years pass He's busy using
the hard weather of our lives,
the dry spells and the stormy seasons to do a job of
beautifying our souls that nothing else can produce.
And to think how often folks holler because
they want life easy!

They took the old barn down today
and hauled it away to beautify a rich man's house.
And I reckon someday you and I'll be hauled off to Heaven
to take on whatever chores the Good Lord has for us
on the Great Sky Ranch.
And I suspect we'll be more beautiful
than for the seasons we've been through here...
and just maybe even add a bit of beauty
to our Father's house.

May you trust God that you are exactly where you are meant to be.
I sincerely thank God for my wonderful friends and family who love me
even though I show signs of weathering.


~April 1, 1925 - January 29, 2009~