Sleep when the wind blows

The other night we went to bed and the wind was blowing. We could hear something rattling out on our balcony. We had left some things on the table and were concerned that the wind might blow them off, so I got up and found that the wasp trap was blowing against the railing, I moved it and took the things off the table and brought them into the kitchen. As I climbed back into bed I thought of a story that I heard many times when I was growing up.

A farmer one day was working in his yard when a man came up the lane. He was looking for work and asked the farmer if he might possibly have some extra work that he could do. The farmer did need someone to be a “hired hand”, so he asked the vagrant what kind of recommendations he had. The man replied to the farmer, “I can sleep when the wind blows.” This seemed to be a strange answer to his question, but the man was clean and looked strong, so he decided to hire him.

Many farmers in those days had a bunkhouse. This was a building, usually a tar paper shack, a distance from the main house. The farmer told the man that he could put his belongings in the bunkhouse and the man went to work. The farmer was satisfied with his hired man and they seemed to get along well.

Sometime later the farmer woke up one night to hear a fierce wind howling around his house. He knew that the wind might damage his property and especially the doors of the barn and the chicken coop and other things that weren’t tied down. He got up and ran to the bunkhouse. He pounded on the door, but there was no response. He tried to wake up the hired man, but he did not respond. In desperation he ran to the barn. He found the doors bolted and secure. The hayloft door was also shut tight. He next went to the chicken coop and found that the gate was closed and all the chickens were locked in for the night. He looked around to see if there was anything that the wind might damage and everything was in order.

The next morning the farmer saw the hired hand walking to the barn to get the milking started. He ran to ask him why he had failed to respond to rouse the previous night. The man simply replied, “I can sleep when the wind blows.”

This hired man had made sure that every evening he had taken care of every task that should be completed. All of his assignments were completed and he served his master well. He did not need to panic, because he had been prepared for any emergency.

I obviously was not prepared for the bitter cold wind, which whistled around our house the other night. I was not ready, for I had left things on the balcony that could have blown away in a very strong wind.

We all have a tendency to procrastinate and not finish things and therefore when the winds come, be they real natural winds or the winds of adversity, we are not prepared and then worry comes into our minds as it did into the farmer’s. The quality of being prepared physically or mentally for the tasks in life is a virtue that we should try and develop in all of our undertakings.

I now have a question for you. Can you sleep when the wind blows?