THE OLD BARN

An old farmer was stopped by a stranger who drove up in a new car. He wanted to know if the old barn by the road was for sale. The farmer said he was crazy for wanting that old thing, but the man was from the city with nice clothes and clean hands. He said when he saw that old barn by the road last week he thought it was a thing of beauty and wanted to buy it.

The old farmer said he had a funny idea of beauty. Sure the old barn was a handsome building in its day, but a lot of winters had passed with their snow and ice and wind. The sun had beaten down on it until all its paint was gone and the wood had turned a silver grey. Now it leaned quite a little because its walls were weak and its roof leaked. The old barn looked just plain tired, yet the rich man called it beautiful.

The farmer named his price and the rich man paid it. The man said he planned to take the barn down and use the lumber to line the walls of his den in a new home he was building down the road. He remarked that you can't buy paint that beautiful. Only years of standing in the weather, bearing the storms and scorching sun could produce beautiful barn wood like that.

Later that day the old farmer thought maybe some people are like that. When we age we get to looking rough on the outside, but it's what's on the inside that is a person's true beauty. Most of us eventually turn a silver grey too, and lean a lot more than we used to when we were young and full of sap.

You see, the Good Lord knows what He's doing. As the years pass He uses the hard weather of our lives, the dry spells and the stormy seasons, to beautify our souls like nothing else can. And yet today folks complain that life should be easy - no struggles, no mean people, no insults, no poverty or sickness or even skinned knees. But that's foolish to think. A life without hardships makes a person soft and unable to withstand anything. A life without hardships can lead us to depend only on ourselves.

Jesus once said, "In My Fathers House are many rooms, and I go there to prepare a place for you." (John 14:2) A week later they took down the farmer's old barn and hauled it away in pieces to beautify a rich man's home. The old farmer smiled as he saw it go.

One day all believers in Christ will be taken down and hauled away to heaven to do whatever chores the Good Lord has for us there. You can bet we'll be more beautiful there due to the harsh seasons we've been through here on earth. And God willing, we'll add a bit of beauty to our Father's House.

A person often thinks of such things as he gets older.