A plain old cardboard shoe box
Wednesday, November 23, 1988

Pix #1 - (no caption - it is a photo of people sitting all over bales of hay)

Author’s note: A regular reader of Guideposts magazine, when I read the accompanying article in the November issue, immediately I picked it as an excellent article, expressing thanks to God for His many blessings at this season of the ;year. I hope you enjoy it too and receive a blessing as you think of all His blessings to our county form ins infancy and through the ensuing years.

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A Plain Old cardboard Shoe Box, by betty Jones, Edgewood, Illinois. Reprinted with permission form November 1988 Guideposts. copyrighted 1988 by Guideposts Association, Carmel, N.Y. 10512.

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Soon our family will be sitting down to another thanksgiving dinner here on the farm, which has been in our family for three generations. this year, in addition to the familiar roast turkey, and the potatoes, green beans and corn from our garden, there will be something different on our table: a plain old cardboard shoe box. In a way, that box will be the most important part of our Thanksgiving dinner. Why? Because it is filled with our thanks.

the box came into being this past summer, during those terrible months of drought, the worse in 50 years. My husband, Bob and our oldest son, Jim farm 50 acres of corn, soybeans, wheat and milo. I had been a beautician in my younger days, and so , what with depressed crop prices and staggering bank interest rates, I had opened a little beauty shop in our basement to help keep our heads above water.

Even so, the drought was threatening to do us in. by July we knew that most of the corn was gone. there wasn’t enough moisture for the silk ear strands, which are pollenized by the stalk tassel, to emerge, and so the kernels, each feeds by its own silk, weren’t developing.

every day, we were praying for rain, ;but nothing was happening. sometimes dark clouds loomed in the west, but it was as if they were only teasing. Soon they’d give way to a fiery sun and a sky yellow with blowing ;dust.

Would there be anything to be thankful for in November? Day after day I’d stand staring out the window at the dogs sprawled flat in the shade as if they were dead, and our catfish pond shrinking fast within its sunbaked banks, and the stunted corn and withered beans shimmering in the heat.

With each scorching day, our worries were climbing with the thermometer. When the bank began giving us real trouble, Bob and I were about to lose our minds.

I was in my darkest mood, depressed, even wondering if god had forgotten us, when Judy Poe telephoned, Judy is a friend from the assemblies of God church in Effingham. “Betty,” she said,. “I just want you to know that I have been praying for you folks all week” She did not know how bad our troubles were, but god had told her we needed prayer.

I broke into tears right on the phone. I was just as if God had put His hand on my shoulder to say, There, there, daughter, don’t worry. I am with you.”

A few minutes later Bob came in from the fields and slumped down at the table. The soybean blossoms are dropping again,” he muttered. Those poor plants were blooming again and again, but with no rain, the blossoms were withering before the pods could form. bob was exhausted. The lines on his sunburned face were deeper than ever. I set a glass of iced tea before him, and as he glumly sipped it I told him about Judy’s phone call.

He lifted his head. You don’t say? It was though 10 years dropped off his shoulders and he smiled into his glass of tea. Makes you realize god is up there after all, doesn’t in?

That evening I wrote our daughter Connie, who lives with her family in Pittsburg, Kansas, As I mentioned the phone call, it seemed to me that the very act of writing it down on paper was prayer of Thanksgiving.

That’s when the idea struck me.

I tore a piece of paper out of the notebook and on it wrote, Judy called to say they were all praying for us.

this was the beginning of what we’ve come to call our Blessing Box. I found a shoe box., cut a slit in the top and slipped that piece of paper into it. I know that for sure we would have a real Thanksgiving dinner,. For come what may, that Blessing box would be there, As sure as my ;faith in God, I know He was going to send us more blessings. And I was determined that the worries in life were not going to crowd out the good things in it. The Bible tells us in Philippians 4:8 that we should concentrate on” ... whatsoever things are lovely ... are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.

Little by little I began to find blessing in unexpected moments and places, and when they happened I'd take note of them and drop them in the box. Like the day Bob was watering the cattle and a neighbor phoned for help. Bob jumped into his truck and sped over there, forgetting to turn off the pump. When he got home the well was dry. This looked like a calamity, Normally it would take a week for that well to refill. But Bob prayed to the Lord to fill that well, and well did fill, and the next day t he cattle were drinking again.

What a blessing.

then other members of our family began to contribute. Our daughter Carol Ann phoned to say she got the teaching job she had so hoped for. The blessing went into the box.

There’s another slip in the box that says simply, When God sent the stranger.

That was a miracle. Our daughter Julie and her husband, Kevin Moore, have a farm-equipment dealership in Xenia, Illinois. They too were suffering along with the farmers. There came a point last summer when they had a payment of $12,5000 to make without a penny on hand. All they could do was pray. The night before the payment was due, as Julie tossed restlessly in her sleep, she had a dream that she was depositing checks at the bank; she saw one clearly for the amount of $12,5000. Se awoke the next morning with a peace she had not felt for a long time.

Then, while Julie was home preparing lunch. Kevin phoned all excited. A stranger had just walked in asking about a tractor. After looking at a used tractor, he wrote out a check right then and there - for $12,500.

Some of those slip will remind us how important it is to cover our loved ones in prayer each day. I bowed my head on the kitchen table in a long prayer of thanks when I wrote, Bob and the runaways tractor.

Bob was cutting wood down by the lake and had parked his tractor on top of a hill. After finishing ;cutting below the hill, he puzzles why he had left one stump remaining so high, but then forgot it as he began chaining up the llo0gs for hauling. suddenly, he heard the tractor brake slip and looked up to see the thing thundering downhill straight at him.. He couldn’t run away. He was trapped by the cut trees behind and on both sides of him. He could only stair at the on-coming machine when, just as it was about to it him, its rear dual wheels caught on that one remaining tall stump and it careened away.

Bob and the runaway is a big reason for thanksgiving, but there are a lot of little ones too. Maybe they are not so important but they do gladden hears. There’s a slip for the time Julie’s children, Stephanie and Tyler, prayed day after day for their lost K.C. (Kitty Cat) to come home, and he did. And the time our grandson Andrew was baptized. And the time our grandsons Ryan and Justin won 4-H blue ribbons ant the Effingham County Fair-Ryan with his quarter-horses, Rusty, and Justin with his little white pony. Georgetown Miss. And the time all four of Connie’s children called me from Kansas on Oct. 16 to sing Happy Birthday.

Then three’s the slip that says, July 20. That’s probably toe one blessing that farmers in southern Illinois appreciated most of all. And maybe two little five-year-old boys had something to do with it. those boys are twins, our son bobby’s boys. On July 19, as the boys were preparing for bed, Bobby overheard them praying. “Pleas God, send us rain,” said Matthew. then Nathan piped up with, “thank You, Lord, for sending us the rain tomorrow.”

On Thursday, July 20,. Bob and I awoke early to a strange sound. We looked at each other, then jumped out of bed and raced to the window. It was pouring! Out first real rain in three months. By that night it had amounted to two inches, and the air smelled so fresh It didn’t help the corn much, but it sure did the beans and milo good, Praise God!

When I started to write out the little blessing slip, I just put down July 20. then I thought of little Matthew and Nathan and added: Except ye .... became as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 18:3).

Yes, that old cardboard shoe box is becoming richer and heavier by the day. And with three daughters, two sons, their husbands and wives, 17 grand children and my 86-year=-old mother joining us for thanksgiving dinner, we’re all looking forward to a good long time together. After the pumpkin pie and coffee, Bob will open the box and we will read each blessing, talk about it, and thank God again for His Bounteous gifts. The Blessing Box will be our real dessert.

And then bob will close with what we wrote on the outside of the box, It’s from Psalm 104: “He causeth the grass to grow for the cattle, and herb for the service of man; that he may bring forth food out of the earth:... and bread which strengthened the man’s heart.”

Rain or shine, drought or plenty, and it’s the blessings God send with it that strengthen our hearts.