For farmers, summer means hard work. With spring’s work—shredding, stumping, planting, and cultivating—done, summer’s toils begin. That labor is the silent and mighty work of sun and water, so my husband and son start irrigating the thirsty cornstalks in their young stages. With the sun and water’s invisible powers, those seeds start the process of transforming into tall stalks with ears that will have anywhere from 500 to 1,200 kernels on them. So, summers on the farm are full of sweat and hard labor, but God has given country dwellers beautiful gifts, reprieves from the strife of this season that makes feeding the world possible, especially the boon of cool breezes.
As summer matures, its fruits become visible and vibrant. The sun’s long, hot rays ripen all the plants in their appointed colors. When evenings come, sometimes, my husband invites me to ride along with him to change the irrigation pumps. When I go, I hear the waters rushing out of the pipes through the fields, row by row, quenching the thirst of the stalks that have reached for the sun all day long.
I love these evenings out surveying the fields when the odor laden winds come up out of nowhere, carrying the rich scent of the wet soil or the neighbor’s freshly cut alfalfa field. I am always grateful for the wind’s fresh breath in the sultry summer evenings, reviving me and the plants. I feel like the dry bones in Ezekiel come back to life. The book of Job tells how God thunders marvelously with His voice. If thunder is His voice, then the wind is His breath. A. W. Tozer explains how this age we turned away from that understanding:
"When God spoke out of heaven to our Lord, self-centered men who heard it explained it by natural causes: they said, ‘It thundered.’ This habit of explaining the Voice by appeals to natural law is at the very root of modern science. In the living breathing cosmos there is a mysterious Something, too wonderful, too awful for any mind to understand. The believing man does not claim to understand. He falls to his knees and whispers, ‘God.’
The man of earth kneels also, but not to worship. He kneels to examine, to search, to find the cause and the how of things. Just now we happen to be living in a secular age. Our thought habits are those of the scientist, not those of the worshipper. We are more likely to explain than to adore. ‘It thundered,’ we exclaim, and go our earthly way (30)."
His breath gives and sustains life, and in the evening breezes, I always pause to thank Him and never lose sight of this fact. When my husband is through irrigating and we drive off, the corn leaves look like they are waving goodbye. On the way home, as the sun sets and the stars come out, one more day’s work is done. The wind blows in through the pickup windows tossing my hair around like the hairs of my head are being counted.
Arriving home, I often linger outside in the cool breeze under the vast night sky sparkling with thousands of stars in this Milky Way galaxy. I often ponder the reality of this universe and its elements, like the wind and our inability to say where the wind comes from or where it goes, but it is real, though invisible. I gaze at the stars—the same stars that David looked at when he wrote his psalms learning to trust the Lord—and know that God is the same yesterday, today and forever. Living on the farm, I am spared from the presumption to ever call myself an expert at anything. Living in the beauty and wildness of creation, I realize that a child is the wise one, the one who continually asks questions that only God can answer, the one who depends on God and knows Him. On these nights, whether the wind is whispering in the trees or in my heart, it is always giving me the same message of truth.
In the midst of all of this wonder, another lovely arrival in late June, at dusk, is the coming of the fireflies. They flick their lights in the tall grasses and trees. We love to be outside in the gentle winds and watch the little green flying candles. I read a poem about fireflies, and the poet called them missionaries from the stars—I smiled at that thought. They certainly are light in the darkness and look like they could have come from the starry sky to bring us good news—and they do eat the slugs and snails, enemies of garden plants and cornfields. There are times in the cool of the evening with that gentle wind fanning us, the fireflies out blinking, and the dog happy we’re home, I ponder that this must have been what Eden was like.
I can’t help but think of that song that says it is His breath in our lungs, so we pour out our praise to Him only. He blesses the farmers with rain and cool breezes as breaks from the summer heat, the laborer with sweet sleep. He breathes His breath out over the earth and readies the fields for the radiant autumn harvest.