The kids had been in bed for a couple of hours and I had just finished folding the last load of his laundry. I walked through the house and turned off all the lights, getting ready to crawl into bed myself. It was the first week of corn harvest here in Nebraska; the beginning of the lonely season for this farmer’s wife.

But before crawling into bed, I walked out onto the front porch and stood at the edge of the steps, leaning up against the beam of the railing. I could hear the hum of the combine from over the hill and could see its lights peeking up over the horizon of the corn. It was probably going to be another late night. And sadly, the next time I would see my husband would be when he would crawl into bed next to me, only to wake up early again the next morning and hand him his thermos of coffee before he walked out the door and into his pickup for another day in the combine.

But as I turned and walked back through the front door, I paused and stared out the window into the darkness. “He needs to know that everything is going to be OK when he comes home,” I thought to myself. And with that, I switched on the porch lights and walked down the hallway towards bed.

“She knows that what she makes is good. Her lamp burns late into the night.” Proverbs 31:18.

For those of us who keep the home-fires burning during the harvest season, we know the long, lonely hours and late nights. And we know the stress that our farmers face while they work out in their fields. But in all the stress that this busy season brings, we can be a source of constant comfort to our men with one simple switch of the porch light.

Light’s on, all is well. Come on home.

Home. The place that is the beacon of rest and comfort at the end of a long day. The place he knows that when he walks through the back door that the weight of the season will be left outside. The place that his supper will be hot in the oven, his children will be safely tucked under their covers, and his bed will be warm from the woman he loves waiting for him. For our farmers, it’s the place they know that our lamps won’t go out, even when the days are long.

The place where the light’s on. For the farmer, there really is no place like home.

You may also like: To The Lonely Mama At Harvest Time