Mission Endure 86: Lessons from the Corn

Matthew and I were headed to a meeting this morning and we drove past a soybean field across the street from a cornfield. We live in southern Illinois and these two crops pretty much define our agricultural system here. They are everywhere. We received about an inch of rain two days ago and everything is green and beautiful as we head close to harvest season. We live in the part of the suburbs I call the rural fringe, where the suburbs turn to rural farmland. We live on the last street, in the last neighborhood, in the last town of a suburban area. You can literally go out our backyard and walk through farm fields and woods for as long as you care to walk. You can tell we live in the rural fringe from the picture below because there are not very many places where you have farm fields framed by sidewalks. I imagine this will be a neighborhood in a couple of years. Regardless, we love living here.

But I noticed something unusual today that I hadn’t noticed before. I saw a lone cornstalk in a sea of soy beans. Here is a photo of it:

Getting back to that cornstalk. It must have grown from a corn seed that was left over from last year and survived the cold Illinois winter. It is a fighter. You can tell by looking at it that it that is doing the best job it can of standing proud in a field where it sticks out like a sore thumb. It is definitely growing straight, and it is also definitely set apart in this huge field of soy beans. But it is only about four feet tall and even though it has a tassle on the top there are no ears of corn growing on the cornstalk. Most likely because there are no other cornstalks around it to help pollinate it. It is totally surrounded by soybeans.

Below is a photo of the cornfield right across the street from this lone survivor:

Across the street is a marvelous wall of corn, similar to what you would see in Field of Dreams. It is thick and luscious and you can see the tassles all across the top of the cornfield. These cornstalks are about six feet tall and each one of them have two ears of corn on them. This is a fully functioning cornfield. What’s the difference? These cornstalks are surrounded by other cornstalks that provide support to each other from the wind and storms, provide shade for each other on hot days, and most importantly, pollinate each other so the cornstalks can produce ears of corn. This is a healthy cornfield.

So, what did I learn today? I learned it is really difficult to be a Lone Ranger. We need others around us to help us perform at our best, and we need to be around others to help them perform at their best. If you are a follower of Christ you are called to be holy and separated from the world, just like that lone cornstalk. But we can’t do it effectively without also spending time around other believers who help us to perform at our best.

Proverbs 27:17 sums this up well when it says,

Iron sharpens iron, So one man sharpens another. (Legacy Standard Bible)

We need fellowship and accountability with other believers in order to function our best