John Deere and the Soybean

Larry Bucher, Adventist Review, August 15, 2002.

It was a big green tractor with bright yellow wheels. In the 1950s John Deere tractors had two cylinders, while most other tractors had four cylinders. So the pistons and cylinders on a John Deere were much larger than those on most other tractors; otherwise, they wouldn’t have had enough horsepower to pull the plow. Additionally, all of the larger John Deeres had the pistons horizontal with the ground, so the pistons went back and forth instead of up and down like on other tractors. When a John Deere was sitting still, the tractor would shake from front to back as the heavy pistons moved back and forth in their cylinders. My neighbor, who was a John Deere mechanic, used to joke that when a John Deere was idling, the pistons sat still and the tractor went back and forth. Normally they were quite dependable tractors.

A local farmer became unhappy with his John Deere. Sometimes the engine couldn’t get up enough speed to develop full power. Sometimes it just quit running altogether. The farmer knew that something was wrong with the gas supply. When he disconnected the gas line from the gas tank, sometimes only a trickle of gasoline came out. At other times nothing came out. The gas tank was clean inside. He couldn’t see any rust in it. So he would blow air into the fuel line until he heard bubbles gurgling up through the gasoline in the tank. Then the gasoline would come out of the gas line freely, and the tractor would run OK—for a while.

Finally he got tired of it quitting on him. It was difficult to get any farming done with a tractor that stopped halfway across the field, so he brought it to my dad’s repair shop.

I looked into the gas tank. It looked clean. The sediment filter under the fuel tank was clean too. I disconnected the gas line. Nothing came out. Dad had a big air compressor in his shop that he needed because several of his tools operated on compressed air. I think the big air tank carried about 120 pounds of air pressure, so I decided to blowout the gas line with the air hose. I removed the gas cap from the tractor’s fuel tank and applied the full air pressure to the fuel line. Pow! A soybean shot out of the gas tank like a rifle bullet. Gasoline now flowed freely from the fuel line.

How did the soybean get inside the tank? When I applied the air pressure, how did the bean find the exit from the gas tank filling area, which I had uncovered?

It seemed so unlikely to happen, yet it did. How could one little soybean make the big tractor useless? As long as the bean stayed away from the gasoline outlet, no one knew it was there. But it made its presence known when it lodged itself into the fuel outlet.

That is the way it is with sin. When we cherish one little sin, it may seem like a small thing in the big picture of our lives. It can roll around inside us. No one may even know that it is there. We may seem spiritually big and strong like a tractor, but one day when we need spiritual horsepower, that sin may shut off our spiritual power supply.

“And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God” (Rom. 12:2). What we allow into our lives, big or little, good or bad, matters a great deal. A smile or a kind word can change a life, but so can a germ or a virus. What we feed on has a powerful influence on our actions.

“Behold, how great a matter a little fire kindleth” (James 3:5). Even though James is talking about the tongue in this verse, the principle applies to life in general. A little match can cause thousands of acres to burn. The spreading of a little germ can cause an epidemic. And a little soybean can stop a big tractor.

What will you allow in your life?