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This year’s Super Bowl was truly “a tale of two halves,” but that was not the best part of the Super Bowl. Fans witnessed a dominant San Francisco 49er offense come to life after a 34-minute game delay and score, in about four minutes, seventeen unanswered points, but that was not the best part of the Super Bowl. With only minutes remaining to score a potential game winning touchdown, the 49ers, in four attempts, couldn’t get it done, and the Ravens won, 34-31. But, once again, that was not the best part of the Super Bowl.
I love football. I love close games. I love the drama and all the nervous energy surrounding an opportunity to win or to lose a big game with only seconds remaining. But, the best part of the Super Bowl, in my opinion, was not even game related. It was, of all things, a commercial.
To explain, Chrysler decided to go very traditional with its commercial for its Dodge Ram truck. Chrysler revived Paul Harvey’s decades old “So God Made a Farmer” speech and aired the speech against a background of emotionally stirring still images. The following is the speech in its entirety. I commend Dodge for including God during a global broadcast. It was refreshing to hear, on national television, “God.” Further, may Mr. Harvey’s speech be our present and personal reminder to honor all past, present, and future farmers.
So God Made a Farmer
And on the 8th day, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, “I need a caretaker.” So God made a farmer. God said, “I need somebody willing to get up before dawn, milk cows, work all day in the fields, milk cows again, eat supper and then go to town and stay past midnight at a meeting of the school board.” So God made a farmer.
“I need somebody with arms strong enough to rustle a calf and yet gentle enough to deliver his own grandchild. Somebody to call hogs, tame cantankerous machinery, come home hungry, have to wait for lunch until his wife’s done feeding, visiting ladies and tell the ladies to be sure and come back real soon – and mean it.” So God made a farmer.
God said, “I need somebody willing to sit up all night with a newborn colt and watch it die. Then dry his eyes and say, ‘Maybe next year.’ I need somebody who can shape an ax handle from a persimmon sprout, shoe a horse with a hunk of car tire, who can make harness out of haywire, feed sacks and shoe scraps. And who, planting time and harvest season, will finish his forty-hour week by Tuesday noon, then, pain’n from ‘tractor back,’ put in another seventy-two hours.” So God made a farmer.
God had to have somebody willing to ride the ruts at double speed to get the hay in ahead of the rain clouds and yet stop in mid-field and race to help when he sees the first smoke from a neighbor’s place. So God made a farmer.
God said, “I need somebody strong enough to clear trees and heave bales, yet gentle enough to tame lambs and wean pigs and tend the pink-combed pullets, who will stop his mower for an hour to splint the broken leg of a meadow lark. It had to be somebody who’d plow deep and straight and not cut corners. Somebody to seed, weed, feed, breed and rake and disc and plow and plant and tie the fleece and strain the milk and replenish the self-feeder and finish a hard week’s work with a five-mile drive to church. Somebody who’d bale a family together with the soft strong bonds of sharing, who would laugh and then sigh, and then reply, with smiling eyes, when his son says he wants to spend his life ‘doing what dad does.’”
So God made a farmer.
Coy Hathcock
Church of Christ at Westwood
McMinnville, TN