Nebraska Synod ELCA

by Gretchen Ahrens, Director for Youth and Justice Ministries

My dad was a storyteller. He was not the kind of storyteller that told different stories every time you met him. He was a storyteller who had ONE story. His story was that he loved the Lord and he loved the Lord’s creation. Period. He had a million variations of this story, but that was his story. And he LOVED to tell it. He didn’t just use words (although he did like to talk and he enjoyed writing poems), he LIVED his story. Every. Single. Day.

By trade, my dad worked as meat inspector for the USDA. But by vocation, Dad was a farmer. He was a farmer who believed that earth and all creation were gifts from God and that we truly were stewards of God’s creation. For Dad, telling the story meant lovingly and meticulously tending the 90 acres in his care. He spent hours reading, learning, and studying best conservation practices. He worked with NRCS, Practical Farmers of Iowa, the Department of Natural Resources, the Cedar County Extension Office, and anyone else who would talk to him about best practices for land management and conservation.

Dad told the story through hours and hours and gentle care for the land. He wrote grants to develop a rotational grazing program. He put in miles and miles of water line and solar chargers on the hills across the land and planned a grid of pastures. He spent years developing the best mix of grasses in each paddock. He knew that farming was part art, part science, part luck, and lots of love. He knew the land was a living, breathing gift from God. And he was happiest when he was walking the land and singing a song with our old dog Buck and a farm cat following him across the pastures.

Dad told the story by caring for his herd. He named the cows. Each cow had handwritten records in a book on his desk. And each day, when he went out to see if they were ready for new grass, he talked to them. He called them by name. They knew him and they knew he would take care of them. If one of his carefully constructed fences got knocked down and a cow went missing, we’d all be called into action. No one was sleeping until that cow was accounted for. I’ve helped haul cows out of everything from the farm pond to the back valley to the neighbor’s yard.

If you spent any time around Dad, you were going to hear the story. It oozed out of him. Dad hosted numerous field days at the farm and they were always focused on conservation practices. They may not have been church events, but my Dad sure was preaching! The story came through loud and clear: love the Lord and love the Lord’s creation.

Dad wanted the story to go on. He loved to teach and work with new farmers, especially those who got excited about rotational grazing and caring for the land. Unfortunately, my dad died in a car accident years ago, but I imagine him meeting the Lord and being told “well done, good and faithful servant,” and I know that the story does go on. I have talked to many people who learned conservation practices from my dad. I see the story go on in the way my sisters and I live our lives every day.

As I reflect on my dad’s story, I can almost hear my dad challenging me with the questions, “What are you doing to tell the story? Are you living the story? Are you caring for creation? How are you being a steward?”

And so, it is my hope and my prayer that we can all find our unique stories, the stories of our call to love the Lord and to love the Lord’s creation. Each of us will find that story in our own way but as those stories are beautifully woven together, I pray that the story of God’s creation will be around for generations to come.