Straight Rows

The other day on my way home from work I noticed a farmer out in the field plowing. It reminded me of the years I lived in Illinois and would drive through farm land at this time of the year and you would see perfectly straight rows. On many of the fields they would be so large that you couldn’t see where the field started and where it ended. So how do they keep the rows straight?

To keep the rows straight the farmer sets up markers on the edge of the field and points the front of the tractor at that mark and just makes sure that they don’t drift off of that mark. The farmer keeps going forward, never looking back or taking their eyes off of that point out in front of them. They have a target and if they take their eyes off that target they start to drift and the rows will not be straight. It is important that the rows are straight so that as the crop grows other equipment that is used in the field will not run over the plant and cause damage.

In life we need to set our eyes on the target and keep our focus or we drift. Our past is behind us and it has shaped us, but unless we look forward we cause problems that may not appear right away but later in our growth process we can get run over because we drifted from our target. Phil 3:13-14