“I recognize the corn around me, of course,” I said. “But what’s that smaller stuff I see growing everywhere? And what’s that huge tractor‑like thing in the barn behind my house?”

“Those are soybeans, and we call that machine a combine,” he said, surprised by my naïveté.

On another occasion I visited a neighbor who proudly showed off his flower garden. The front of his house was filled with every kind of bloom I could imagine.

He told me about all the stuff he planned to add next year. “Where will you find room?” I innocently asked. He laughed, “Why these are what we call annuals. They die over winter and I’ll have to plant new things.”

I had no idea. I grew up in Lake Havasu City, not exactly a major player in the 4‑H Fair.

At first I was self‑conscious about my agricultural inexperience. But Fred, an old‑timer, put my mind at ease when he said, “Preacher, we don’t expect you to know anything about farming. We know plenty about that ourselves. You just keep on teaching the Bible and we’ll get along just fine.”

And we did. Our four years as a young family in Dillman, Indiana were among the happiest and most rewarding of our lives.

Anyway, as I said, Chuck loved to coon hunt. Turns out, it’s not really very sporting, at least as Chuck described it to me. 

Apparently the key to a successful coon hunt is a good dog. The dog picks up the scent of the raccoon and chases it up a tree. The hunter follows the dog and then shoots the coon–a sitting duck–out of the tree.

As I said, it doesn’t sound too sporting.

One day I saw Chuck getting ready for a late‑night coon hunt. In the back of his truck were two cages into which he was coaxing his two hunting dogs.

“Why do you have two separate cages for the dogs?” I asked.

Chuck looked at me, incredulous. “Are you kidding?” he said. “Why them dogs would kill each other if I put them in the same cage!”

“Really! Why is that?” I asked.

“Well, them dogs is made for huntin’, and if they ain’t huntin’, they’ll be fightin’.”

Made sense to me.

Later I mused: maybe that’s what’s wrong with us church folk. We were created to serve people like Jesus did, but instead we prefer to be caged up together. Denied our natural calling, we resort to infighting and barking.

Doesn’t sound very sporting to me.