Investments Gone Bad...Arthur Shares...

Although life on the farm is generally pleasant and I enjoy working with cattle, sometimes it is not so.

Late in the summer and early fall we had an outbreak of blackleg. (I didn't know that was what was causing it). One day I went out and found four nice big calves dead. Calves are the income from the beef herd and they went from a value of $500. - $600. to zero overnight.

I was feeling depressed about it and then I started thinking about Job. Things didn't seem so bad and I got a grateful attitude. Most are still alive. I found out that many years ago my grandpa had a blackleg outbreak. Now I am more familiar with the disease than I care to be. We had to vaccinate the rest of the young stock.

I thought the beef herd was a really certain, stable income...a sure thing. There is no sure thing in life but there is a God we can always trust to supply our needs. If values go up or crash to nothing we can always trust the Lord.

Job 1:21 "...The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord."
Lamentations 3:22, 23 "It is of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed because His compassions fail not..great is thy faithfulness."
Habakkuk 3:17, 18 "...there shall be no herd in the stalls...Yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation"

(Blackleg is a disease young cattle get from dirt in the ground, especially late in the fall when it's cool. It's a quick disease where they may be healthy one day and dead the next. Arthur was too busy to bury the calves and so the birds and who knows what else enjoyed them.)