A Farmer and his Three Sons

This tale is intended to help parents understand their children and for children to maybe understand themselves.

There was a farmer who had three sons. He was neither rich nor poor, he always liked to think he had enough for his needs. He had no grand schemes to become better than the next man or be the biggest man around town. If anything he concerned himself with his farm and the raising of his three sons and this he did with varying degrees of success.

The farmer’s pride was in his first son who was now well advanced in years and was earning his living in a town away from home. This son was respectful to his mother and mindful of his duty to his parents. Every month when he came visiting he would bring them one or two things he knew they needed and one or two more that they did not expect. This was a son with good morals, honour, dignity, intelligence, humility and peace. A son a man would be proud to call his own.

The farmer’s misgiving was his second son. He got a headache everytime he would think of him. This was the only one among his sons that made him quietly suspect the seed did not originate from his own loins. He was the sort that would be shamed by a beggar, for there were days he could not find the strength within himself to turn in his bed from one side to another. Such was his laziness that he could lie in bed all day. And such was his laziness that he would not lift a finger to feed himself if he could help it preferring that others cook for him too. Whenever there was farm work to do he would reliably vanish mysteriously until well after the work was done. The farmer was a man who had known hard work all his life, surely that was the way of life, so you will forgive him for failing to understand why a man will not bother or even care to do work that will put food in his own mouth.

His third son was not much better but still better off regardless. At least he put in a little more effort in his survival even if it meant at other people’s expense. This son was a thankless thief. If anything went missing you didn’t have to ask, such was his notoriety that there could be no other suspect. He stole from the farm, he stole from his mother, he stole from his brother and even from the blind beggar who came around begging alms. If this one attended church there was no doubt that the church purse would be even more miserable than it already was. In fact, since he had last stolen three whole cows, trafficked them to the neighbouring village and sold them to the resident butcher, he had not been seen again. He only called once or twice to let his mother know, in his own words, that “they had not hanged him yet”.

Now a man has to wonder how from the same mother and even same father his children can be so unlike them in character, morals and disposition not to mention unlike each other. The question he can ask himself is where did he go wrong with the other two? They had even better opportunities than the first, had same discipline and affection from them. The moral of the story though is that one’s progeny is like the parable of the sower says it is if taken as an allegory.

“Listen carefully: a sower went out to sow [seed in his field]; and as he sowed, some seed fell beside the road [between the fields], and the birds came and ate it. Other seed fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil; and at once they sprang up because they had no depth of soil. But when the sun rose, they were scorched; and because they had no root, they withered away. Other seed fell among thorns, and thorns came up and choked them out. Other seed fell on good soil and yielded grain, some a hundred times as much [as was sown], some sixty [times as much], and some thirty.”- Matt 13:3

Now the children we have may not be lazy or thieves but they will have other faults peculiar to them depending on an unlimited number of factors over the years. You may wish them more wise or more strong, more ambitious and less rebellious. But they may not be. Take comfort in knowing that your part is to sow the seed and water its growth, how a seed grows and how it ends up bearing the fruit it bears that only God knows. No two trees will ever be alike, each becomes its own thing and this without your knowledge but under your nose. In fact there is only so much you can do about it and its only one part out of five of what make up your child’s character. But pray for us children that we may grow up pleasing and acceptable in the eyes of our fathers and that according to God’s will for our lives.