‘Hows Your Paint Job-Looking Tired And Worn?”
The Weathered Old Barn
By: Author Unknown
A stranger came by the other day with an offer that set me
to thinking. He wanted to buy the old barn that sits out by
the highway. I told him right off he was crazy. He was a
city type, you could tell by his clothes, his car, his
hands, and the way he talked. He said he was driving by and
saw that beautiful barn sitting out in the tall grass and
wanted to know if it was for sale. I told him he had a funny
idea of beauty.
Sure, it was a handsome building in its day. But then,
there’s been a lot of winters pass with their snow and ice
and howling wind. The summer sun’s beat down on that old
barn till all the paint’s gone, and the wood has turned
silver gray. Now the old building leans a good deal, looking
kind of tired. Yet, that fellow called it beautiful.
That set me to thinking. I walked out to the field and just
stood there, gazing at that old barn. The stranger said he
planned to use the lumber to line the walls of his den in a
new country home he’s building down the road. He said you
couldn’t get paint that beautiful. Only years of standing in
the weather, bearing the storms and scorching sun, only that
can produce beautiful barn wood.
It came to me then. We’re a lot like that, you and I. Only
it’s on the inside that the beauty grows with us. Sure we
turn silver gray too and lean a bit more than we did when we
were young and full of sap. As the years pass we use the
hard wealth of our lives, the dry spells and the stormy
seasons, to do a job of beautifying our souls that nothing
else can produce. And to think how often people complain
because they want life easy, when it is because of the
struggles we live through that we become the people we are.
Find peace with who you are and embrace the problems you
come up against every day. You will only become more
beaut
iful for it.