You are God's farm!

Four words towards the end of today’s reading at Mass really stood out: 'you are God's farm' (1 Corinthians 3:9). While the surrounding phrases are so familiar I could almost recite them verbatim, until today I have never noticed these four words.

Of all days, they were particularly meaningful today. On the third anniversary of his death, my uncle Timmie was very much in my heart. At morning prayer, I prayed in thanksgiving for his beautiful personality.

So why did these words of St Paul’s strike me? Because my uncle Timmie was a farmer, because I grew up next door to his farm, because I spent hours in his company, in his home, on his land.

St Paul reproaches the Corinthians for being ‘still unspiritual’, for missing the point: we are ‘co-workers with God’ but only God matters. It is God who makes things grow. This is something my uncle was keenly aware of and passed on to us.

Were St Paul to meet him, he would surely recognise in Timmie a man who was ‘of the Spirit’, someone intuitively mindful of and in touch with God-at-work in the farm year and in nature all around him, someone who knew it wasn’t all down to his efforts.

He held the natural world in deep respect. Timmie was the one who taught me never to kill a spider, that they have their place and it is an important one! He was (almost) philosophical about the vagaries of nature and the ways the weather can, and often does, let us down: grass grown for silage can be too wet to cut, cattle may need to be kept indoors on winter fodder when spring takes longer than usual to arrive, some calves are poorly and fail to thrive. But at the same time he was not beyond choice words when plans went awry. He was real, authentic, fully human and, in that, he was like all saints are.

And he was a saint in my eyes. And not just in my eyes.

To my brother Tim and I, he was like a second Dad, always warmly welcoming and attentive even when our stay extended for many hours, patiently allowing us children to ‘help’ him by feeding calves or walking with him to bring in the cattle (in truth, we probably slowed him down, but we were never given a sense of that). We loved him and we knew he loved us deeply.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus heals many including Peter’s mother-in-law who, in her turn, puts herself at the service of Jesus. True to what Jesus teaches, love of God made visible in quiet, humble, selfless service was central to Timmie's being.

Uncle Timmie was a gentleman, loved and respected by so many and his many kindnesses were offered discreetly and without fanfare. He was generous with his welcome and with his time, always willing and available to help, always kind to others, adults and children alike.

This morning, my prayer was one of thanksgiving for Timmie’s beautiful personality.

This farmer, part of ‘God’s farm’, was a saint in my eyes. May he rest in the peace of Christ and face-to-face with the One who makes things grow.