It was the time of planting.

When he got to town, there were many merchants and farmers selling seed. Some were selling seed at different prices; one sold seed at 25 cents a bag, another sold it at 50 cents a bag, while yet another was asking $1.00 a bag.  This poor man only had $10.00 to his name. As he looked at all the different seed, he noticed a friend who owned a parcel of land very near his own.  This man was selling his seed for $20.00 per seed!  The poor man couldn’t believe his eyes. He knew this other man and trusted him more than all his other friends.  He approached him to enquire of the price.

His farmer friend told him that it was a very special seed that had been bred and produced in another country and was well worth the asking price.  The poor man said, “I only have this $10.00 to my name and I need it to buy bags of seed to plant and food to live on.”  His friend said to him, “What is this $15.00 difference to us?  We are friends and neighbors.  I will sell you this one seed at my cost which is $5.00.  Take your other $5.00 and buy food to live.  Only take this seed and guard it with your life.  For there are enemies that have come from the same far country who are not only trying to buy up all of the seed; but they are stealing that which they cannot buy.

“If you tend this seed, it will grow into a great vine and produce the choicest of grapes.  When it does, come back and pay me the remaining $15.00 with no interest.  And I will also buy your harvest at fair market value.”

This poor man went away glad and did all that the husbandman had told him.  He planted this seed deep in his garden.  He dug deep around it and put in a fence and a gate.  He took out all of the rocks and all of the thorns and thistles. He pulled out all the weeds.  He watered it with the purest of water, and fertilized it.  He watched it and protected it daily.  He drove the fouls away that came to take it.  Whenever he saw a weed springing up trying to steal the vines water, he immediately recognized it and plucked it out by the roots.  He nurtured it and pruned it .  It meant everything to him.  You see, he knew the value of what he had.

Over the process of time, it grew into a great vine and produced much fruit.  He decided to not only sell the fruit, but to build a winepress and make a bottle of the finest wine to present to his friend in appreciation of the $15.00 loan.  He went to his friends house to give him the $15.00 and the wine.  The vinedresser received him into his house and they shared of the wine.  The poor man told his friend how very difficult it was to have grown and tended this vine; but that in the end it was well worth it.  The merchant-man bought his harvest at fair market value as promised.  He was so impressed that this poor man had done exactly as he was bidden, that he said to the poor man, “You have excelled well in your planting, and in your tending, and in your harvest.  Look and behold how large my own vineyard is!  I am away on business most of the time, and if you would like, I would like to make you one of my husbandmen.  Please tend my fields and root out all that offends.  I will make you part owner and you may share in its profits.  Behold, my servants are now your servants.  Take them and teach them what you have done.”  This new-found rich man then made some of the servants vinedressers, and some of them cultivators whose job it was to take out all the weeds and rocks which were continually placed in the fields by his enemies.  He assigned some to be irrigators, some to be pruners, and some to be watchmen.  And yet others he assigned to mend the walls and the fences.

And this man rejoiced in all his labors, and in his abundance that was entrusted to him.

My spirit is the parchment,
upon which He writes down His Son
My spirit is the temple,
where all His works are done

Where once I used to look out,
now I peer within
Where once I sought to see myself,
Now I just see Him 

God has truly wrought a work,
way down deep inside
Inexpressible ~ unexplainable,
His Spirit there abides

I used to wrestle blindly,
till the breaking of the day
Now He does the breaking,
He’ll finally have His way

I’m older now ~ I see more,
I understand His plan
My hardened heart is softer now,
I finally see the Man

The Galilean conquered,
the Nazarene has won!
My will, my plans, my future,
have now become the Son’s

Praying in the garden,
He bids me further in
My will He will be breaking,
A reckoning within

Many years have come and gone,
He sows and then He reaps
He’ll have still more ~ I know it,
He wants it all for keeps

Arthur W. Pink

What strange methods God sometimes employs in teaching His Children much needed lessons! This has recently been the writer’s experience. I have been approached by a “university” to accept from them a degree of “D. D.” Asking for time to be given so that I might prayerfully seek from God, through His written word, a knowledge of His will, fuller light came than was expected. I had very serious doubt’s as to the permissibility of one of God’s servants accepting a title of fleshly honor. I now perceive that it is wrong for me to receive it even complimentary. Various friends, as a mark of respect, have addressed me as “Dr. Pink.” I now ask them to please CEASE from doing so. Let it not be understood that I hereby condemn other men for what they allow. No, to their own Master they stand or fall. The principal passages which have helped me I now mention, praying that it may please God to also bless them to others.

FIRST, to the false comforters of Job, Elihu (God’s representative) said. “Let me not, I pray you, accept any man’s person, neither let me give FLATTERING TITLES unto men” (Job 32:31). SECOND, “Be NOT ye called Rabbi” or teacher” (Matthew 23:8), which is what “Doctor” signifies. THIRD, John 5:44 reproves those who “receive honor one of another” and bids us seek “the honor that cometh from God ONLY.” FOURTH, none of the Lord’s servants in the New Testament ever employed a title. “Paul, an apostle, “but never “the apostle Paul.” FIFTH, the Son of God “made Himself of no reputation” (Phil. 2:7); is it then fitting that His servants should now follow an opposite course? SIXTH, Christ bids us learn of Him who was “meek and lowly” (Matthew 11:29). SEVENTH, one of the marks of the apostasy as “having men’s persons in admiration because of advantage” (Jude 17). EIGHTH, we are bidden to go forth unto Christ outside the camp “bearing His reproach” (Heb. 13:13).

For these reasons it does not seem to me to be fitting that one who is here as a representative and witness for a “despised and rejected” Christ should be honored and flattered of men. Please address me as “BROTHER PINK”

Since then three hundred years have fled,
And, I infer, the calf is dead.
But still he left behind his trail,
And thereby hangs my moral tale.

The trail was taken up next day
By a lone dog that passed that way;
And then a wise bell-wether sheep
Pursued the trail o’er vale and steep,
And drew the flock behind him, too,
As good bell-wethers always do.
And from that day, o’er hill and glade,
Through those old woods a path was made.

And many men wound in and out,
And dodged, and turned, and bent about
And uttered words of righteous wrath
Because ’twas such a crooked path.
But still they followed – do not laugh-
The first migrations of that calf, 
And through this winding wood-way stalked,
Because he wobbled when he walked.

This forest path became a lane,
That bent, and turned, and turned again;
This crooked lane became a road,
Where many a poor horse with his load
Toiled on beneath the burning sun,
And traveled some three miles in one.
And thus a century and a half
They trod the footsteps of that calf.

The years passed on in swiftness fleet,
The road became a village street;
And this, before men were aware,
A city’s crowded thoroughfare;
And soon the central street was this
Of a renowned metropolis;
And men two centuries and a half
Trod in the footsteps of that calf.

Each day a hundred thousand rout
Followed the zigzag calf about;
And o’er his crooked journey went
The traffic of a continent.
A hundred thousand men were led
By one calf near three centuries dead.
They followed still his crooked way,
And lost one hundred years a day;
Foe thus such reverence is lent
To well-established precedent.

A moral lesson this might teach,
Were I ordained and called to preach;
For men are prone to go it blind
Along the calf-paths of the mind,

And work away from sun to sun
To do what other men have done.
They follow in the beaten track,
And out and in, and forth and back,

And still their devious course pursue,
To keep the path that others do.
They keep the path a sacred groove,
Along which all their lives they move.
But how the wise old wood-gods laugh,
Who saw the first primeval calf!
Ah! Many things this tale might teach-
But I am not ordained to preach.

Sam Walter Foss