Another Ancestral Farmer

Francis Hodge was one of the first settlers of the Nashville area to leave the safety of the forts and build his own cabins on his granted land. One still stands in a local park. There is a good essay about it at http://pages.prodigy.net/nhn.slate/nh00055.html. He and his descendants settled near an old Native path, which became a road later. They were active in the Methodist church, and often held Bible studies with people who were passing through the area.
It felt good to go to the park and see that they were restoring the cabin, even if I could not find where some of my ancestors are supposed to be buried in the park. It is very close to my grandparents' former home, which narrowly missed the land condemnation that formed the park (part was donated by a wealthy donor, and the rest was forced from the hands of much poorer small farmers, who were given a pittance for their land). I visit the park with mixed emotions- it is preserved from the development surrounding it, but many people had their livelihood permanently altered by the assembly of the park.
It is also comforting on another level to read of the Hodges and Northerns and other founding families of Nashville to whom I'm related and their faith. Faith held them together when they set out, literally into the unknown, to settle land they had never seen and farm under unknown conditions we would consider nowadays to be those of severe hardship- no grocer, no electricity, no indoor plumbing, no appliances. And still, at the end of the day, an open Bible by evening firelight.
No matter what our coming hardships, we can depend on God to help. We have depended too long on ourselves and our good credit; let us turn to the God of our fathers, who will get us over the rough places. Our own "inner light" has led us deeper into the dark; let's turn around, and go back to where we erred in order to go forward.