He feeds out one bale, and only one, and he has done it that way for nineteen winters.
It is a quarter past seven on a January morning and the whole feed lot is smoking with the breath of forty cows. He backs the flatbed up to the ring, cuts the twine with a folding knife and coils it and puts the coil in his pocket, because loose twine ends up in a gut or in a mower, and he has seen both. He rolls the bale off. He counts head while they come, out of habit, and they come unhurried, because they have never had a reason to hurry.
His neighbor puts out four days at a time and has said so, cheerfully, more than once, and the two of them have gone around about it for years.
The argument is not complicated. Hay set out ahead gets slept on and trampled and rained through, and cattle waste what is standing in front of them. One day worth means the herd is fed and nothing is ruined and he is out here every morning anyway. So one bale. Every day. Nineteen winters.
He knocks the frost off the ring with his glove and stands there a minute while they eat, with his hands in his coat and the steam coming up off the whole lot into the low sun.
And on the drive back to the house he is thinking about the calendar in the kitchen.
There is a date on it, and he circled it himself, and he would not say out loud what he circled it for. He wants to be a different man by then. Less of what he has been. More of whatever the other thing is. He can hear exactly how it sounds even as he thinks it, which is why he has never said it to another person.
He wants the whole year's worth delivered this morning.
He wants God to back a truck up to him and put out twelve months of change in one drop so he can quit thinking about it, and he has never once in nineteen winters considered that he is asking God to do the thing he refuses to do for his own cattle.
You know that calendar. Yours might have a date on it too, and it might be a birthday, or an anniversary, or the day somebody comes home. And you can hear how it sounds when you say it, which is why you keep it to yourself.
God has never fed anybody a year at a time
Start with the one place in Scripture where God fed a whole nation directly, with no farmer and no harvest in between, and watch how He did it.
Then said the LORD unto Moses, Behold, I will rain bread from heaven for you; and the people shall go out and gather a certain rate every day.Exodus 16:4
A certain rate every day. Not a month. Not a season. Two million people in a desert with no other food source, and the God who could have dropped a year of it in one morning did not, and it was not because He ran short.
You are being fed the way God has always fed people, and the size of the portion is not a comment on you. Exodus 16 is written as the pattern rather than as an emergency measure, and the same Spirit who led that nation through the wilderness is the one leading a man out to a feed lot in January, so a daily portion is the design and not a rationing.
And notice what happened to the ones who tried to store it. It bred worms. It stank. Not as a punishment, but because manna was never built to be a supply; it was built to be a meal, and a meal held onto is a different substance entirely.
You have today's portion in your hands already, and today's portion is a full portion. Lamentations 3 says His mercies are new every morning and never says they arrive in bulk, and it is His Spirit who brings them out fresh at daybreak, which means what you were given this morning is not a fraction of something you were shorted on.
Why a year's worth was never on offer
Now the harder question, and I want to answer it honestly rather than piously.
Why not just do it? Why does God not hand a man twelve months of change on a January morning and let him get on with his life?
Part of the answer is the same as the hay. A year of it set out ahead would be slept on and trampled and taken for granted by the second week, because that is what happens to anything standing in front of us in quantity, and nobody has ever treasured a surplus.
But the deeper part is harder and better. A man with a year's worth in the barn does not come out to the lot in the morning. And the coming out is not a fee God charges for the hay. The coming out is the thing itself. What He is after is a man in the cold at a quarter past seven, near Him, receiving, which is a relationship and not a transaction.
You were made for the morning trip and not just for the feed. Jesus taught His disciples to ask for daily bread rather than for a year of it in Matthew 6, and the Spirit who inspired that prayer is not stingy, He is near, and a daily loaf keeps a man at the door of a Father who wanted him there.
I will say the other half plainly too, because this site does not deal in half sentences. Slow is not a verdict. A day's worth is not what God gives to people He is disappointed with, and it is not a smaller ration handed out to the ones who have not earned the bigger one. Every person in that wilderness got the same daily measure, the strong and the weak, the new and the old, and nobody was on a different tier.
You have never been on a reduced portion, and there is no larger allotment being kept from you in a back room. It is written that God gives generously and does not reproach anybody for asking, and His Spirit is the one carrying that generosity out fresh every daybreak.
The date on the calendar
Let me speak to the circled square, because it is the reason anybody stays with a page like this one.
I am not going to take the date away from you. You want to be different by then and that wanting is not vanity, it is hunger, and hunger is the correct response of a person who has tasted something real and wants more of it. Name it. Say it to God in the truck. He is not embarrassed by it.
What I am not going to do is hand you a schedule. Not a season, not a stretch of months, not an encouraging estimate dressed up as faith. Nobody writing on this page knows what next winter looks like in you, and anybody who tells you otherwise is guessing in a confident voice and charging for it.
You have this morning's degree of it, and this morning's degree is the only one that has ever been available to anybody. Matthew 6 says the day has enough in it without borrowing from tomorrow, and the Spirit who inspired that line is at work in the day you are actually standing in rather than in the one on the calendar.
And if the wanting has an edge of desperation on it, if the reason you circled that date is that you honestly do not know how much longer you can go on like this, then hear this part with the truck stopped. A person brought in on this belongs to the work and does not stand in for it. Get in to a doctor, because a body no longer making what it needs will paint a whole life hopeless from the inside out. Sit down with a counselor and give them the unedited version. Tell a pastor what you have never said out loud. And if there are mornings now that you would rather not wake up to at all, call 988 today rather than after the weekend, or a crisis line in your own county, and get one person close enough to ride out to the lot with you tomorrow. That is not beside the point of this page. On a January like that it is the point.
You have people God fully intends to use in this, and taking their help is not going around Him. Ecclesiastes 4 says two are better than one because when one falls the other lifts him up, and His Spirit has been arranging that kind of company since long before you thought to ask for it.
So take today's bale. That is the whole of it. Not the year. Not the twelve months you circled. Today's.
This is yours right now, in the lot, with the frost still on the ring and the calendar still on the wall. Exodus 16 promised bread rained down at a certain rate every day, and His Spirit is the one carrying it out at daybreak, so today's degree of change is not a consolation prize for the year you wanted. It is the actual thing, delivered.
And I will not tell you what you look like next winter. I do not know, and knowing was never handed to me, and a man who tells you otherwise has quietly moved himself into a chair that belongs to God.
You are being changed in the day you are standing in, and that day is the only one anybody has ever been changed in. It is written that His mercies are new every morning, and the same Spirit who breathed that through Jeremiah is at work in a truck cab on a January morning at half past seven. Take the portion. Go on in and get warm.
Declare this over yourself
Say these out loud in the truck, or in the kitchen under the calendar. Out loud, where you have to hear yourself say them. Standing in Christ is what a man says a thing like this from, and that standing belongs to you already, and it has nothing to do with how much of the year a man can see from the cab of a flatbed: the authority is the Lord's, handed down, and cold hands and a feed coat take nothing off it. Not one of these three lines is mine; they come off the page of Scripture and stay there, and a said thing gets hold of a man because the Holy Spirit puts it there and not because the saying was smooth, so a rough voice at a quarter past seven does what a smooth one does. What comes of the rest of the winter belongs to Him, and I take today's out of His hand without needing the date to be mine.
- Calendar on this kitchen wall, you are twelve squares of paper and a circled date, and you were never the ration book for what God gives me. Exodus 16 says He rains bread at a certain rate every day, so today has its own portion in it and I am taking today's.
- Fear that I am being fed small because God thinks small of me, your lease on this kitchen runs out at daybreak, in the name of Jesus. Lamentations 3:23 has His mercies new every morning, and His Spirit has been carrying them out to me at daybreak through nineteen winters I never once said thank you for.
- Lord, You are the one who rains bread and You have never missed a morning. You promised a certain rate every day and never once promised me the year in one drop, so I am taking what is in my hands today with the date left where I wrote it and the wanting handed to You.
Exodus 16:4
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