Story and drawing by David Hatch

I would like to tell you a story.

Word is that one fall, after a grain elevator had serviced the community harvest, a federal inspector came for a look at the facility.

Unable to find the elevator manager, he took the liberty to climb a ladder outside a tank, all the way to the top. He opened a manhole cover, stepped through with his flashlight, and walked over the grain.

Using a re-rod, he probed around, checking the grain. Its high level in the tank at this time of year was a surprise.

“It should have gone to market by now,” he thought.

When he returned to the bottom the manager had arrived.

“Why is it that you have so much grain in the elevator?” the inspector asked.

“There’s no grain in it whatsoever,” the manager said.

He opened a steel door.

The inspector peered into an empty tank.

They shone the flashlight beam to the top and, even to the manager’s shock, saw a frozen ring of grain.

If the inspector had fallen through, with his probe, it would have been the end of his life.

David Hatch was born and raised in Ames, Iowa. Prior to college studies, Pastor Dave worked construction and had hopes of serving in law enforcement until his partial color-blindness prevented that. He did not know what to do with his life. Through God’s Providence and a phone call from his sister, who was a kindergarten teacher in Milwaukee, he enrolled in a college where, unknown to him, many of his future classmates were studying to be pastors. He received his education at Concordia College in Milwaukee; Concordia Teacher’s College, River Forest, Ill.; and Concordia Theological Seminary, Fort Wayne, Ind. His pastoral career began in 1982, following seminary, when he served as an admissions counselor at Concordia College in Bronxville, N.Y. and parish pastor at Love Lutheran Church outside of Albany, N.Y.