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Rather than rely on Washington, we can look to God for aid with dairies

Dairy crisis meetings are happening coast to coast. Senate Ag committee hearings are being held in Washington, D.C., while in California there has been an emergency meeting called for dairymen and allied industry to voice their concerns.

Next month, a group wants to “Do D.C. in December” to have a coast-to-coast, coordinated effort and steadfast presence to gain national attention and meet with our state representatives.

Dairymen of all shapes and sizes are, at best, feeling a crunch and, at worst, just hanging on by a thread. But is this what we were created for? To live with such anguish over a livelihood?

I received an e-mail from another farm wife who made me sit back and say, “Duh!” Here’s what she said:

Dear Melissa,

PRAYER is so much the answer to our current “state of the industry.” You have seen how prayer, by a relatively small group of people, changed the circumstances of the dairyman who fell out of the silo. Now is the time that we, as industry, need to band together and pray collectively about the circumstances that are eating away at our livelihoods.

Have you heard of “meet you at the pole?” Students and others, all around the country, meet around the flagpoles to pray for the school, the government and their families on their own time. Maybe we need to have a “meet you in the parlor” or “meet you at the silo” day and pray that our circumstances start an immediate turn around.

Our financial crunch is not just affecting us anymore. Our children, staff, extended families, churches, vendors and charities, etc., are noticing that we aren’t able to do what we normally do. This is bigger than Farm Aid and so much more important.

We are engaged in the first industry endorsed by God. He is the first consultant we should be contacting to help us get out of this predicament. He engineered this industry and we screwed it up now we need to go back to the source to fix it. The Bible says that one can put 1,000 to flight (I’m sure he was talking about Sandhill cranes) and two, 10,000. Can you imagine what the dairy farmers and extended industry can do when we join together in prayer?
-H. Wing, Bellevue, Mich.

Of course! Where else should we go? Washington can’t fix this. Organizations can’t fix this. And we certainly haven’t been able to fix this ourselves. Why not go to God?

God is waiting to help us, to hand out an extra helping of grace and mercy. For those of you who feel as though you have to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps, that’s admirable. But God not only can solve the crisis, He wants to because He loves us that much.

Okay, let’s get the ball rolling … where do we begin? E-mail me!

The views and opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and not necessarily those of Farm World. Readers with questions or comments for Melissa Hart may write to her in care of this publication.

11/11/2009