When I was young, I spent summers with my grandmother on a plantation in Pantherburn, Mississippi. Old-timers taught us life lessons while we worked the fields.
My uncle said, "Boy, you got to learn how to hoe your row. In these fields and as as you grow up to be a man."
I was five years old, trying to work with a hoe that was nearly three feet taller than me. I watched the grown folks cultivating empty fields and chopping rows for planting cotton that seemed like a mile long, and every row had to be straight.
At the end of the day, everybody had done two or more rows and they were straight as arrows. My little row was about half a football field and was crooked; it looked like spaghetti strips.
My uncle looked at my crooked rows and said, You can't hoe a straight row if you just looks at what's in front of yo' feet. You got to fix your eye on something at the end and go straight to it. It's that same way in life too, boy. Fix your eyes on where you trying to go and not on where you at right now. Ifn' you take your eyes off your mark, it's nary impossible to go straight."
I had my uncle in the fields, in life however, I learned in Sunday School that everybody needs the Lord keep to keep reminding us keep our eyes on the prize or we are subject to hoe a crooked roe every year.
I guess that's the meaning of Proverbs 3:6 says, "In all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight."
My uncle taught me how to hoe a straight row, but learning how to finish my roe, was another lesson altogether. It takes a lifetime to do that.
From my uncle to you, "Don't get distracted, keep your eyes on the prize."
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