honors response 10

I'm just going to start this post off being honest.  I did not like this book.  For starters, it was very hard for me to follow along with, and maybe that had a lot to do with the fact that I was reading it off of my computer.  However, I think a lot of it had to do with how much I disliked Andy.  To me, all it seemed like he did was look at the bad things in life.  He would always whine about how he didn't have a hand.  Maybe I'm being too harsh about it, but I was just annoyed for the entire time I was reading this book.

With all of that put aside, there was one particular section that I found quite interesting.  Both Bill Meikelberger and Isaac Troyer were farmers, but they lived totally different lives.

To start, Meikelberger had an extremely elegant lifestyle.  To sum it up, his house "was a brick ranch house with ten rooms and a garage, each room a page from House Beautiful" (61).  His farm consisted of a lot of land, a lot of machinery, and a lot of hired help.  He had three children,  one was a doctor, one in law school and one was married to a company executive, yet he is in debt and does not believe he ever will be.  As I will elaborate more on later in this post, I think that Meikelberger's situation is rather strange, however I think that it may not be as uncommon as one would think.

Isaac Troyer's farm is contrasting to that of Meikelberger.  He only lived on 80 acres of land.  He had a wife and five kids, and his parents live very near to them.  Yet, what really got me thinking was his interaction with Andy:

"How much land do you have, Isaac?"

"Eighty acres."

"Eighty acres.  Is that enough?"

"Enough for what?"

"To make a living."

"Well, we're living, aren't we?" 

Eighty acres is enough land to take care of nine people.  Yet Meikelberger's wife has to go into town to work everyday in order for the two of them to survive. 

Now this may have something to do with how the two men farm, however, I think that a lot of it has to do with their mindsets and their lifestyles.  

I think that Meikelberger is selfish.  He has such an incredible house, only for him and his wife, and they don't even use it.  He tells Andy that they usually go out to eat in town and not use their immaculate kitchen.  Yet Isaac, with significantly less land, and not as a nice of a house, and with more people to take care of, is surviving just fine.  Again, there is a lot that goes into the debt of Meikelberger, but I think that he is squandering what he has.  He can do so much good and influential things with his house and his land.

Here's where I am coming from on this whole topic.  I come from a family of 9.  Three of my younger siblings are adopted, and my parents have told us over and over that one of the reasons as to why they adopted was because we have the room in our 4 bedroom and 4 bathroom house.  I remember my senior year of high school, there were 3 beds in my room.  As much as I hated it, and thought that my house was way too small for all of us, it really wasn't.  My parents saw that they had the money and the space to help three little girls, so they did.  

The farms of Bill Meikelberger and Isaac Troyer really reminded me of the parable of the talents in Matthew 25.  Isaac used his land and worked on it to the best of his ability, therefore God is taking care of him and his family.  However, Meikelberger, sure he works on his farm, but it seems as if he was too worried about rebuilding his house and making it as fancy as possible and putting machines in and hiring other people to do his work for him, which is probably why he is in so much debt.

Relating this all back to Christians and the environment: I think that whatever God has given us, whether it be land, talents, extra money, extra space in our homes, we as Christians should use all that God has given to the best of our abilities.