Wearing Wedding Dresses Through the Mud

Wearing pretty wedding dresses through the mud on a dairy farm is not exactly the greatest idea,

but that is exactly what our girls did after Tonya's wedding.

So here they are, finding their way through muddy spots to get back to the dairy barn.

We also explored down by their luscious garden.

One of the ladies of the farm urged the three little ones to each pick themselves a watermelon--

so they did!

Who can turn down a fresh watermelon straight from the garden?

We visited the cow barn that houses 200 dairy cows.

As I understand it and as we were told, this farm is one of only three left in the States, that has this turntable for the cows to be milked on.

Forty cows at a time enter one at a time. The cow finds its spot and stays there till the milker is done and the table has rotated back to the gate where the cow will get off again.

Several families who had been at the wedding stayed to watch the milking done in late afternoon.

It was amazing watching the turntable.

Everything is computerized. Each cow wears a computerized band on its leg, and on the turn table, the computer reads which cow it is and whether its milk is okay or whether there are problems and the milk needs to be separated. 

It also measures how much milk it gives.

One cow gave about 48 pounds of milk, or about 6 gallons!

Here all the children are watching, wide-eyed.

This is the tank where the milk is kept--

a 5000 gallon tank, and here is the other side of it.

Yes, wedding apparel and dairy farm mud aren't exactly compatible,

and I am reminded of when Jesus said, "You are in the world, but not of the world."

He gives us a robe of righteousness that we must keep clean 

as we navigate through the mud of life's situations.

 Some make fun of those who want to keep clean, pure and righteous before God,

so that we may be presented spotless someday before God. 

They talk about how we want to just gather our righteous robes about us and be Pharisaical and legalistic.

I prefer to think of the story of the little white flower discovered growing in a dark coal mine.

Every day the dirt and dust would fall upon this little flower,

but by and by its petals were as white as ever.

Something in the petals of the flower kept the dirt and dust from staying on it, and it stayed beautiful and clean despite all the dirt around it.

We live in a sinful, dirty world, and we are not unaffected.
Sometimes dirt falls upon us--
we feel confused, we are hurt by the deeds and attitudes of others,
sometimes, being human, we ourselves make mistakes or hurt others,
we may do one thing and wish we hadn't,
or refrain from doing something and later wish we had.
We may not know what to do at times.
But by and by, like this beautiful yellow butterfly that landed softly atop the black mud on that dairy farm,
God dusts us off, washes away our sins, errors, mistakes, hurt feelings, upsets, and confusions,
and keeps us clean, washed, forgiven, and right in His sight.