No Time for That: Answers for the Busy Rural Life

Articles

Oct 22

By Joshua Satterlee

The Land Has a Rhythm

There is good news for the busy rural life, and it does not ask you to stop working. It asks you to let a second rhythm run alongside the one you already know.

I grew up here. I left, and I chose to come back. I work here, and I carry the same hurry I am about to describe. So this is not written from above anyone. If something lands close, I want you to know: me too.

The land has always had a rhythm. Calves come in spring. Crops go in when the ground is ready and come out when the sky says so. Winter shuts things down whether the list is finished or not. For most of history the darkness and the cold stopped people, and something in that stopping, whether anyone knew it or not, was rest.

Then, invention by invention, we learned to override it. Electric lights stretched the day. Bigger equipment let one man do what used to take a crew of neighbors. The phone in the pocket took the last quiet place, the field itself. Each change was called progress, and much of it was. None of it came with a note saying it would also crowd out the rest God built into the shape of our days.

What the Hurry Costs

I once spent eighteen hours gathering calves off the roads in the dark. They had been vaccinated and moved to a new pasture within two days. On the outside they looked fine. Inside, their bodies were still doing the slow work of recovering. When their strength came back all at once, the fence could not hold them, and they scattered across the countryside.

That is the cost of moving too fast. You do not always see it right away.

Life can go the same way. There is no time to pull off the road, no ten minutes, no sitting with the Word long enough for it to sink in. The quiet work Christ does in a person, settling and steadying us, gets skipped for the next job, and then the next. The years go by. The anger has not eased. The weariness has settled deeper. The people who needed us present have been paying the cost of the urgency the whole time.

The further north you go, the shorter the season, and the shorter the season, the more compressed the person. The hurry does not take the winter off. You can sit down in January and the urgency does not sit down with you.

I think of the man who comes home empty after a full day of cutting calves or pounding posts. He is not holding back from his wife. He has nothing left. And his wife has been running on empty too, managing the calls, the appointments and the children while everyone assumes she is just helping. Two tired people sit across the dinner table from each other.

This is not simply a failure of character. Much of it is what a long, honest, demanding way of life does to people who have never been shown another way to carry it.

A Good People, Shaped by a Long Season

Rural people are hard-working, resourceful and faithful. They show up when a barn burns. They run the meal train after every surgery and funeral. They go back out into the storm for a neighbor. Every word of that is true, and I would not trade it.

It is also true that all of us are being formed by something. The man in the city is formed by the city. The man on the farm is formed by the land, the season and the culture that grew up around them. Over generations, that formation taught many of us that stopping is falling behind, that needing help means failing, and that our worth is measured by what we get done.

I once asked a good, honest, churchgoing farmer whether he could sit still for five minutes and listen for God. He did not have to think long. "No. That would drive me nuts." He was not being stubborn. He was being accurate. Decades of short seasons had taught his body that stillness meant wasted time.

When I was asked where I had been afraid to lean on Jesus, my answer came just as fast: work. Work was the place where I've got this felt like a virtue and I need you felt like a last resort.

Our churches are made of the same people, so they often carry the same pace: an efficient hour, a three-point sermon, a full calendar. That is not because anyone is doing it wrong. It is because pastors and people alike have been shaped by the same long season. Many rural pastors are as tired as their congregations, carrying everyone's burdens with no one to carry theirs.

This is not a verdict. It is more like a map. Some readers will see themselves on every line. Some will see a neighbor. Most of us will land somewhere in the middle. And the good news is that this formation is not the end of the story.

The Answer Is Not Less Work: A Second Rhythm

In music, a polyrhythm is two rhythms played at the same time, such as three beats against four. Each keeps its own integrity, and together they make something richer than either one alone.

The trouble in a busy rural life is not that the work rhythm exists. It is a good rhythm, and God gave it. The trouble is that it is often the only rhythm playing.

The second rhythm is Christ's: rest, stillness, the Word received slowly, and leaning on the One who called you his own before the work began. That rhythm is not meant to replace the work. It is meant to run alongside it.

God wrote this second rhythm into creation itself. He worked six days and rested on the seventh (Genesis 2:2–3). He gave Israel daily bread one day at a time, a weekly Sabbath, and feasts for stopping and remembering. Jesus said, "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath" (Mark 2:27). It was a gift, never a burden. Christ himself is the rest the Sabbath pointed to (Hebrews 4:9–10), and a regular day of rest and worship is still his good gift to weary people.

The man who sets aside a day to rest and worship is not being careless. With his own body he is saying, I trust God to provide what I cannot produce while I rest. Sabbath is an act of faith, practiced every week.

Dallas Willard put it simply: grace is not opposed to effort; it is opposed to earning. It takes effort to stop when everything in you says keep going. But stopping earns nothing. It puts you in a place to receive what Christ has already given.

The Approach Road: Ten Minutes on the Way Home

The second rhythm does not begin with a program. It begins with a field approach.

On the way home from work, pull off onto the approach to a field. Stop the truck and close your eyes. Give the Lord ten minutes. That is the whole practice. It holds three simple things.

Let the body settle. Breathe the breath you have been too busy to take all day. Let your shoulders drop, your jaw loosen and your hands stop gripping. All day you have leaned forward, braced and producing. For a few minutes you practice a different posture: receiving.
Take one verse. One verse, not a chapter. Read it, then read it again. Turn it over the way you would walk a piece of ground before deciding anything. James tells believers to "receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls" (James 1:21). God does the planting. Our part is to receive it humbly. But a farmer knows a seed that never gets past the surface sits in dry ground, and the ten minutes give the Word room to go down deep. You do not make the moisture. Jesus promised that the water he gives "will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life" (John 4:14). The ten minutes let the seed reach it.
Lean back. At the Last Supper, the beloved disciple reclined against Jesus (John 13:23–25). He was not striving or performing. He simply rested his weight there. Picture that table and let your own weight fall back on the One who loves you.

On the ranch there is a sorting gate. One step left or right sends a cow down the right alley or the wrong one. The approach road is one step backward, toward Christ, taken day after day. Over time, as the Spirit works through his Word, it can change the direction of a whole interior life.

It will not feel natural at first, and you will not do it perfectly. You only need to slow down enough to get a taste. Once you have tasted the rest Jesus promised, you will want to come back for more.

"Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." (Matthew 11:28)

That rest is real, and it holds.

At the Dinner Table

The second rhythm does not end at the approach road. It drives home with you.

A man who has spent ten minutes leaning back can walk through his own door a little differently. That night he may ask his wife how she is and wait for the real answer. He may put the phone down when his son starts to talk. Small moments like these are what the hurry usually leaves behind like dust on a gravel road. Now they can be caught. Where the hurry has hurt the people we love, the way forward includes saying so plainly and asking their forgiveness. Grace makes that kind of honesty safe.

For the man, healing often begins when he turns around and finds that the people behind him are still there. He learns that he can stop leaning forward and the family will not fall apart.

For the woman who has carried everyone, healing often begins when she sets something down. In the presence of one safe person, she finds she is not too much, and what she has been carrying was never hers to carry alone (Galatians 6:2).

The children are watching both. They are learning what faith looks like when the season goes badly and the books do not balance. A father who stops and a mother who rests are teaching them that God is present in a hard year too. That lesson can change a family for generations.

For the Church That Already Shows Up

The rural church already has the hardest part, and that is showing up. Neighbors bring casseroles without being asked. They go back for the stranded animal and sit with a family after everyone else has gone home. That instinct is the love of Christ at work, and it is the soil everything else grows in.

What comes next is simple. Add the second question.

I learned this in a pasture, not a classroom. I helped a man sort his cattle. I did not announce myself or invite him to anything. I picked up a rope. When the work was done and we stood at the fence, I asked, "How is your walk?" He looked surprised. The question was not strange to him. He was surprised that anyone was really asking, and that it felt safe to answer.

That is how Jesus met people too. He came to fishermen at their boats and called them there (Mark 1:16–20). After the resurrection he stood on the shore and cooked them breakfast before he spoke to Peter about the night Peter denied him (John 21:9–17).

The rural church does not need a bigger program. It needs ordinary people who show up, help with the work, ask the second question and stay for the real answer. A farmer, a rancher's wife, a nurse or the person at the elevator who knows everyone's name can all do this. Many of you have been doing it for years without a name for it.

Pastors can lead the way by taking the approach road themselves and resting before they burn out. It is no failure for the shepherd to need the Good Shepherd too.

You Are Seen, and You Are Loved

On a cold spring night I made the last check of the pasture and almost drove past him: a newborn calf, still wet and separated from his mother. He would not have lived until morning. When I came close he tried to run. I caught him, put him in the cab and set him by the warmer at the barn. He had done nothing yet. He had not been useful or productive. He was only cold and alone, and I went down the hill for him anyway.

The psalmist asked, "What is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?" (Psalm 8:4). He asked it in wonder. God is mindful of us, not as ghosts but as real people in real bodies: hands that cramp, backs that ache, and minds that have been running since April.

I sat once with a man in a nursing home who had worked his whole life. For fifty years he sat in the same pew, gave, served and provided. Near the end, with the Bible open between us, he said quietly, "I hope I've done enough."

Here is the answer the gospel gives him, and you. You were loved before the work started. That love is not a feeling, and it is not cheap. It was shown at the cross: "God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8). The God who came down the hill for us came at the cost of his own Son. Jesus did not say "well underway." He said, "It is finished" (John 19:30).

None of this makes work unimportant. It means work is no longer the measure of your worth. A man who is already loved can work hard and still go home and rest. And the rest is not only for the life to come. It begins on the approach road this week.

Planting Tamarisk Trees

Genesis tells of a quiet moment: "Abraham planted a tamarisk tree in Beersheba and called there on the name of the LORD, the Everlasting God" (Genesis 21:33). He planted it after making a covenant at Beersheba, and he called on God by a name that looks past one lifetime: the Everlasting God. A tamarisk grows slowly. Abraham was likely planting shade that others would sit under long after him. That is how God works in his people too: slowly, faithfully, across generations.

Rural people already know how to think in generations. We farm land our grandparents broke and hope our grandchildren will work it. The invitation is to bring that same patience to the life of the soul. Ten minutes on an approach road will not change everything by Friday. But a man who sets his corner posts solid can run a straight fence line, even when some of the posts in between went in crooked.

So start small. Here are a few questions to take with you:

Can I give the Lord ten minutes on the way home tomorrow?
Is there a second rhythm running in my life alongside the work?
Who showed up and stayed for me? Who could I do that for?
If God sees me right now, what does he see? Not what I have been performing, but what he truly sees.

The land will keep its rhythm. The work will still be there in the morning. But you do not have to carry it the way you have been carrying it. The One who made the seasons offers rest within them, and it is available now.

If you or someone you love is struggling under the weight, you do not have to carry it alone. Call or text 988 (Suicide & Crisis Lifeline) or the AgriStress Helpline at 833-897-2474, and talk with your pastor or a trusted friend.

Article

Joshua Satterlee