The Son
This is a tale of three sons. Each of these sons’ fathers played a very important part in their story. The paths each trod may have been very different if their fathers would have not been the men they were. That’s not to say their fathers were great men by worldly standards, or that their fathers guided them into a certain direction. It’s more like their father’s path was the start of their journey.
The first young lad’s father was a “breadman.” By “breadman” I don’t mean a baker. No, his father would take the bread the baker baked and sell it to merchants who would then peddle it to the local citizens. His father didn’t just sell his bread to the merchants, though. He also helped his merchants sell their bread to those who took it home for meals.
The father helped the merchant by making sure the merchant always had the freshest bread in the village. He would neatly stack the bread for the merchant, putting the newer bread under the older bread so the older bread would sell first.
That’s not to say he just wanted to get rid of the older bread because that was not true at all. Once the bread got hard, the breadman knew it would not be very good to eat. If someone took home some stale bread, they just may not come back to buy any more of his bread. He would take the stale bread back and exchange it for new bread. The old, stale bread, he would sell to the pig farmers very cheaply.
The breadman had many happy customers. One of the reasons the breadman had so many customers was that each of his customers was left with the feeling that they were his most important customer. The breadman was no actor, well, maybe he was a little bit of one, for he liked the approval of his adoring audience placed on him, but he really just cared about people and wanted to be a bright spot in their lives.
The second young lad’s father, Earl, was a farmer. Earl’s father and grandfather were both killed in altercations. Earl was a teenager when his father died and he had to grow up quickly. Earl took over the family farm.
Earl was a bit stubborn, at times, too. He was determined to be self-sufficient. If something broke on the farm, he would learn to fix it himself before he would pay someone else to fix it. Even a task like repairing their shoes was done in one of the shops on the farm. The lad would remember his dad as “a competent forester, farmer, herdsman, blacksmith, carpenter, and shoemaker.”
As the only son, or the only son until his parents had another son when he was twelve, Earl’s son was required to learn the tasks needed to run the farm, too. As soon as he was old enough, the son would learn to be a blacksmith. The son became a good carpenter, too.
When the young lad was just five years old, he began to discover that he had entrepreneurial traits. Just as school let out for the summer, one of the many crops his dad raised was ready for harvest. He would take his little wagon out of the yard and the son would go into the field. Here he would pull up some of this crop, shake off the dirt and throw it into his little wagon.
Once the lad had picked about ten pounds of the crops he would head back to the house. At the house he would throw the crops into a vat of salt water to soak overnight. He would wake up early the next morning and take the crop out of the vat and boil them for about half an hour. He would then take about twenty paper bags and divide the crops equally into those bags. When he was done he would place the twenty bags in a wicker basket.
The lad would then travel down to town with the wicker basket full of the bags he had filled. Most of the two mile route took him down the railroad tracks. He would sell the bags of the crops to the locals for five cents each. They were usually gone before dinnertime. At a nickel a bag, he would earn about a dollar a day. In those days that was a lot of money. Some of the adults would be lucky enough to earn that much a day.
The third lad was also the son of a breadman. Although many centuries separated the two boys whose fathers were breadmen, they would grow up on similar paths. Where the first son’s father might have loaded his burro with his supply of bread, the other son’s father had a truck. Where the first son’s father would sell his bread to local merchants who lined the street, the second son’s father sold his bread to grocery stores.
As this third son grew up he wanted the chance to help his father sell his bread to the grocery stores. He begged his dad to let him go to work with him. The father was afraid it would turn more into babysitting duty than actual help, and he just tried to ignore the son’s suggestion.
The son was very persistent, though, he would write notes everywhere to remind his dad to wake him up to go to work with him. There were notes at the sink where his dad shaved. There were notes where his dad picked up his lunch. There were notes at the door his father walked out of to go to his truck.
Still, the father would just step quieter, as to not wake up the boy, as he headed off to work early in the morning. The boy couldn’t understand why his dad didn’t want him to go to work with him. Finally, the boy got up in the wee hours of the morning when his dad was getting ready. The boy’s persistence paid off and the father took him with him to work.
As the father approached the dock where he loaded his bread onto the truck, he sternly told his son to remain absolutely quiet and out of sight. He didn’t need his boss finding a stowaway in his work truck. After all, this was a bread business, not a babysitting service.
The first lad’s father made sure that his son understood the importance God played in the bread that He had given him to sell. Although, he was but a poor breadman, he tried real hard to fit in with the more distinguished citizens who worshiped at the local temple. His bright smile and humorous side was his greatest weapon.
The lad’s father also had great respect for the priest. He also made sure the lad always showed the greatest respect to the priest. Maybe the father’s upbringing caused him to question, a little bit, whether he deserved to be in the priest’s and the distinguished citizen’s presence, but he never let on to his son that this was the case. The father believed that everyone equally had the right and obligation to use their talents before God.
Because of his father’s strong faith and character many of the distinguished citizens soon forgot that his father was a lowly breadman. Soon the father’s bread was being used in their Passover services. The son learned that his father’s bread was not just dough that was used to fill bellies, but it was also a nutrient that was being used to fill people’s souls.
The farmer’s son quickly learned the value of obedience. His father was very strict and the son completely understood that if he veered off that path he would be physically punished. The son very rarely tested those limits and as he grew older he came to respect the boundaries his father laid for him. He also understood his father never abused that discipline nor held a grudge at his disobedience. The debt had been paid and hopefully the lesson had been learned and they would begin anew.
The farmer’s son, when he was old enough to enter school, would attend a school that was made up of the white population of the children in the area. The age of the kids that attended that school ranged from first to twelfth grade. This was very different from where he grew up because most of the kids he grew up with were black and he never really gave into the notion that there was really any difference between them. That was a rare attitude for a boy his age.
Each of the farmer’s son’s school days began almost the same way. There was a half hour of chapel. Then they heard the announcements. Then they would sing some hymns, recite the Bible, and listen to a brief religious homily.
The third boy’s dad was much like the first breadman’s dad. His father pretty much grew up poor but he worked real hard to establish a family that would never experience all of the hardships he faced when he grew up. Through who he was, the boy’s father instilled a strong spirit in the boy that it is only God, not man, who judges who you are.
Still, the second breadman really wanted to be respected in church. He wanted to be part of like-minded individuals who came together to worship God. Although the other church members and he did not always see eye-to-eye on the meaning of the Scriptures, his heart always went in the direction he felt God, and not his fellow man, was leading him.
This stubbornness to listen to what he believed God was telling him sometimes caused friction in the church he attended. Despite some people making rude comments to him, he would always stick to his beliefs and never hold hard feelings toward any of those making those comments. Seeing the tough time his father had in some of these efforts may have led the young lad to be a little cautious when he entered adulthood.
One of the things I have often wondered about the Bible is the lacking of great details in many of the stories. Jesus’ parables, for instance, are usually very short. They rarely tell us how the characters got to their places in the story. Often they are open ended and we aren’t real sure what happens to the characters once the story is over with. Maybe this helps them to be more timeless and their usefulness everlasting because if they were more detailed they would be limited to the audience they applied to at the time they were given.
For me, I sometimes wander in my ideas of the characters as they come into play in certain stories in the Bible. How did they really get there? Why did they act the way they did? What lessons can I apply to my own life based on theirs?
In the New Testament, there is a story of a little boy in a great crowd. Although the story is well told, you really have to look hard to find him in it. The story itself is in all the Gospels. It is only in the last of those Gospels, John, that the young boy comes into the story.
In the King James Version of the Bible, his only mention in the whole Bible is when he is introduced in the first five words of one verse: “There is a lad here….” There is no name. There is no mention of where he came from. It does not say if his parents were even there with him. It doesn’t even say Jesus actually acknowledges him. It just says he was there.
Out of all these people in the crowd, he is the only one who seems prepared for the day. Why was he the only one who was prepared? I imagine he was taught to be prepared by one or both of his parents.
The story is about the great crowd that came to hear Jesus preach, some 5000 of them. All are amazed by His words. I’m sure His disciples were once again awed by His ability to deliver one incredible sermon after another. The disciples also had to be floored with the sizes of the crowds that kept coming to see Him.
I imagine when He was done with the sermon the disciples turned to Him and said, “Wow! Another great one boss!” Jesus probably turned to them and said, “Yeah. I’m hungry. Let’s eat. And, oh, by the way, let’s feed the crowd, too. I’m sure they are hungry, too.”
The disciples’ jaws probably dropped. “Why didn’t He tell us this before we left town? Then we could have brought something with us. There isn’t a place around here that is going to have that much food,” they probably thought.
Some of the disciples probably turned to Jesus and said, “Are you crazy? Where are we going to get that much food?” Jesus probably turned to them and said, “I just told you to find them some food. Why are you still standing around looking at me? Go find some food!”
Embarrassed, perhaps, one of the disciples brings back one lad who has five loaves and two small fish. Out of 5000 people, only one little boy thought to bring some food and that amount of food was probably just enough for him and some of his friends? Why would they even bother to bring such a small token into the Lord’s presence? And if no one else thought of bringing food in this large crowd, why did one little boy bring some?
Maybe the lad was the first little lad in our story. Maybe his father was a breadman. Maybe his father taught him that he didn’t just deliver bread, he used even the gifts of a lowly breadman to make a difference.
Jimmy Carter grew up on his father’s farm in Georgia. It didn’t sound like it was in the richest parts of Georgia. In a time of segregation, most of Carter’s early childhood friends were black. It wasn’t until he went to school that he realized that he “wasn’t supposed to have black friends.” He was never comfortable with that concept.
Jimmy Carter’s father, Earl, was a farmer and he taught him the value of hard work and leading a moral life. These are principles, I believe, most people believe are the strongest traits of Jimmy Carter.
At a very early age, Carter would go out into his father’s fields in the summer time and pull the peanut plants out the ground and shake off the dirt and throw them into a little wagon. He would take them to the house and soak them in a salt solution overnight and boil them the next morning. He would travel the two miles to town and spend most of the day trying to sell them.
One could very easily argue that Jimmy Carter’s Presidency was a disaster. Many things went wrong and many of those things could be traced to his questionable talents to lead the nation. But I don’t think there are too many people that could argue that he has been the most humane and caring ex-President in our entire history.
He founded the Carter Center in 1982. The Carter Center’s slogan is: “Waging peace. Fighting disease. Building hope.” The Carter Center explains their purpose as: “A nongovernmental organization, The Carter Center has helped to improve life for people in more than 80 countries by resolving conflicts; advancing democracy and human rights; preventing diseases; and improving mental health care.”
Clarence Jordan, one of my favorite Bible version writers of some of the New Testament Books (he wrote the Cotton Patch Version of some of those Books), and Millard and Linda Fuller came up with idea of Habitat for Humanity in the 1970’s. Jimmy Carter’s personal involvement with the group started in 1984. As a former President, he led a work crew on one of their projects in New York City. You would have to have a very cold heart not to be impressed to see the elder, former President, still swinging a hammer for that cause.
The third little lad was me. I remember the days I would beg and plead with my Dad to take me to work with him on his bread route. I thought he had the coolest job ever and I eventually learned to be a great help to him.
I remember so fondly my time with my father in his bread truck. If I were to do that task today, I would probably consider it just work, but even in my memories today, it was a great blessing to get to know and learn from my Dad in his work environment.
My father taught me many things, not the least of these is the fine art of eating. I learned to put the mustard and onions under the 7-11 hot dog before I put the chili and melted cheese on top. I learned to squeeze the Roy Rogers sauce in between the different layers of meat and to pile high the “free toppings” to make the best roast beef sandwich ever.
But my Dad also taught me the value of listening for the voice of God and then not being afraid to follow what you believe He is telling you. It is here that I know I am not half the man my Dad is. Don’t get me wrong, I’m trying to get there, but it has taken me a very long time to understand the absolute value in that lesson.
For those who don’t understand my stubbornness in my willingness to follow what I believe God is telling me, please understand that I have seen an example worth imitating. I have tried to follow the crowd. The solid example, although not always easier, is definitely the better route to take.
I wonder what it would have been like to be in that crowd of 5000 when Jesus was talking. Five thousand people there ready to hear His words. Five thousand people were there looking for answers and directions for their lives. Yet only one little lad came prepared to make a difference.
Would you like to share a loaf of bread with me?
Prayer: Dear Mighty Father, Thank You for the wonderful example that I have been lucky enough to call my Dad. Thank You for using him to teach me that it is always better to obey Your words than it is to feel included in others’ good graces. Please help me through those very hard times when others want me to turn away from Your words or to bend them to suit their circumstances. Amen.
