** For Rural Life Sunday ***

I had a little pony

His name was Dapple Gray;

I lent him to a lady

To ride a mile away.

She whipped him,

she lashed him,

She rode him through the mire;

I would not lend my pony now

For all the lady’s hire.

“Dapple Gray” is one of our finest nursery rhymes on the subject of stewardship. The lady to whom Dapple Gray was “lent” was a steward, a poor steward to be sure, but, nonetheless, a steward, one to whom had been entrusted the property of another.

Dapple Gray’s rider lacked an adequate sense of her stewardship, so Dapple took the beating. We, as stewards of the soil often treat it in the manner in which the rider of Dapple Gray treated him. Through our ignorance or through our concern with immediate profits, in other words, through our poor stewardship, we have “whippe…