Dear Friends,

The world behind me, the cross before me;

No turning back, no turning back.

– S. Sundar Singh

The bread that sustains us does not come to us without violence. That is the inescapable truth.

Since time immemorial, the sheaves of grain that are the staple crop of human existence, have been brought to the threshing floor. In that rock-hard, barren place, situated where winds will blow across it, the sheaves are piled. There the grain will be thrashed with a flail, a long stick with a shorter stick tethered to it. Or the grain will be crushed beneath a threshing board, a heavy log, plank or stone dragged over it .

The goal is to separate the kernels containing the germ, the bran and the endosperm that form the nutritious, live-giving fruit of the plant from the stalk that has lifted it up until it ripened in the sun and the husk that protected it during the growing season. It would not be productive to do this by hand, one stalk at a time, so the wheat is threshed to yield the volume necessary to feed a hungry people.

The residue of the threshing, is then tossed in the air with a wooden fan-like winnowing fork or placed in a woven basket and thrown in the air repeatedly. The wind blows away the chaff, the crushed broken remnants of stalk and husk that have no value because the energy of those parts of the plant have been expended to ripen the fruit. The heavier kernels fall down away from the chaff and are then gathered to be ground into flour suitable for baking.

This is the way that grain was threshed until the process was mechanized with threshing machines in the 19th Century. It is still done this way in primitive cultures. Threshing is a difficult process involving pounding and crushing to separate what is life-giving from what is dead.

Several words and phrases that describe violent, frenetic activity, harsh judgment, and hard labor come to us from the threshing floor such as “I am flailing about;” “You deserve a thrashing for this,” “We will winnow out the useful from the useless;” “You have to separate the wheat from the chaff.”  The bits and strips of aluminum deployed from fighter jets seeking to deceive the guidance systems and sensors of incoming rocket fire is called “chaff.” These are not words of peace and good times, but they describe things absolutely necessary to life.

None of us escape the threshing floor — the hard, cruel places in life where the true is separated from the false, reality is shaken away from illusion, clarity emerges from the mash-up of feelings, expectations, and conflicting perspectives, what counts against what is valueless, and what is life-giving rather than life-draining. The ravages of illness, injury, personal or communal conflicts, disappointments, failures, and oppressions of all kinds will thresh us.

The threshing floor is where we are refined, purified, and adjusted. If we do not go to the threshing floor we are wasted and lost. But what happens on that hard, exposed surface is painful.

Jacob dies when Joseph and his brothers are in the edgy process of reconciling from family dysfunction, abuse and betrayal. They are grieved by the loss of their father. The sons accompanied by the the entire court of the Pharoah carry Jacob’s body back to Canaan. Just beyond the Jordan, they halt at the threshing floor of Atad where they hold “a very great and sorrowful lamentation” for seven days before burying Jacob (Gen 50:7-12).

The threshing floor is a place of mourning.

Ruth, destitute, starving and vulnerable, is sent by Naomi to the threshing floor to beg Boaz to “redeem” her. She leaves blessed and cherished (Ruth 3:1-18).

The threshing floor is a place of redemption.

David defies God by taking a census of his people to prove his power and authority, forgetting that God was the source of everything he had. “God was displeased with this thing and he struck Israel” (1 Chron 21:7). He presents David with a hard and heartbreaking choice of consequences for his sin. In three days, 70,000 people have died of the plague and David is laid prostrate in supplication to the Lord on the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite.

The threshing floor is a place of humiliation.

It is a “high noon” moment with a destroying angel with drawn sword ready to carry out the Lord’s wrath against Jerusalem while David confesses his sin to the Lord and pleads that he and his family be destroyed rather than the innocent people. God relents and the angel’s sword goes back into its scabbard. The Lord tells David to build an altar there on the threshing floor and worship (1 Chon 21:18).

The threshing floor is a place of unconditional surrender.

David seeks to buy the threshing floor from Ornan. Ornan says, “Take it; and let my lord the king do what seems good to him; see I present the oxen for burnt offerings, and all the threshing sledges for the wood, and the wheat for the grain offering. I give it all” (1 Chron 21:23).

The threshing floor is a place of self-giving.

David tells Ornan, “‘No; I will buy them for the full price. I will not take for the Lord what is yours, nor offer burnt offerings that cost me nothing.’So David paid Ornan six hundred shekels of gold by weight for the site” (1 Chron 21:24-25).

The threshing floor comes with a great cost.

“David built there an altar to the Lord and presented burnt offerings of well-being” (1 Chron 21:26).

The threshing floor is a place of worship. It is where we learn that the Lord is God and we are not.

Solomon lays the foundation of the temple on Mount Moriah, “where the Lord had appeared to his father David, at the place David had designated, on the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite” (2 Chron 3:1).

The threshing floor is the place of new beginnings where we start to build a permanent (eternal) life with God.

I am on the threshing floor right now with friends and colleagues. Difficult separations are taking place. Hard decisions are looming in what seems like utter darkness. Disappointments tempt with bitterness. Friends write to me about the devastating toll of illness and the chastening of the healing process. Fear and cowardice cause some to cling to the useless stalks and husks of the dead past rather than take the pounding and crushing necessary to life going forward.

Yet Jesus stands on the threshing floor and offers himself as the goal and the process. He says “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of  wheat  falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honor” (John 12:23-26). Our service does not spare us from the threshing floor.

The threshing floor is our place of service.

What are you facing these days? Are you waiting for some safe and green spot of great beauty to build your altar and worship the Lord? If you are dying on the threshing floor you can know with a certainty that the Lord is bringing you to life on this hard and exposed surface even while you are being pounded and crushed.

The threshing floor is the place of resurrection. It is the very place to build your altar and worship.

“O taste and see that the Lord is good. Blessed are those who take refuge in him” (Ps 34:8).

Under the mercy of Christ,

Kent

 

 

————————–

Please note that the content and viewpoints of Mr. Hansen are his own and are not necessarily those of the C.S. Lewis Foundation. We have not edited his writing in any substantial way and have permission from him to post his content.

————————–

Kent Hansen is a Christian attorney, author and speaker. He practices corporate law and is the managing attorney of the firm of Clayson, Mann, Yaeger & Hansen in Corona, California. Kent also serves as the general counsel of Loma Linda University and Medical Center in Loma Linda, California.

Finding God’s grace revealed in the ordinary experiences of life, spiritual renewal in Christ and prayer are Kent’s passions. He has written two books, Grace at 30,000 Feet and Other Unexpected Places published by Review & Herald in 2002 and Cleansing Fire, Healing Streams: Experiencing God’s Love Through Prayer, published by Pacific Press in spring 2007. Many of his stories and essays about God’s encompassing love have been published in magazines and journals. Kent is often found on the hiking trails of the southern California mountains, following major league baseball, playing the piano or writing his weekly email devotional, “A Word of Grace for Your Monday” that is read by men and women from Alaska to Zimbabwe.