In discovering that I really enjoy listening to my new ear buds during my walks, I searched for an appropriate holiday book. Lo and behold I couldn’t have found a better one than the King James Version of the Bible, (KJV). Based on my reading speed, I mean listening time, Audible estimates that I have an additional 47 hours of listening to hear all 66 books of both the old and new testaments. For my feeble mind to comprehend all the begats and parables, I am sure it will take me longer, but I am committed to doing it.

Without trying to sound too sanctimonious or obsequious, for that matter, I submit to you that I am already finding parallels in the words of the KJV to our modern day and, by implication, personal meanings for our meat and poultry industry. These are not tenuous threads of similarity but lessons certainly for me and maybe for us all.

Many of you probably find biblical parallels in your life’s work in our meat and poultry industry. And I am sure that if we all think hard enough about it, we can find some in our past work life that would qualify. However, I would like to relate just one I can think of that happened to me that some would construe as a religious epiphany.

I looked at the clock as the phone was ringing and saw it reflected 2:30 am. The voice on the phone sounded terribly distraught, to say the least, and tearfully told me that his 14-year-old son had died that morning from an accident while riding his four wheeler. Going over a rise and into a ditch, he was thrown off the vehicle, broke his neck and subsequently died in the hospital. Sorrow overwhelmed me for this father, who was a foreman in one of the chicken processing plants for which I was responsible. I listened to his recitation of the accident and then told him I was on my way to offer help in any way I could.

As I drove up to the foreman’s house, it was nearly 4 a.m., but yet the street was clogged with parked cars and many of the plant’s employees were milling about the house’s entrance. I got to the door and ushered myself in to console the grieving parents. In shaking the father’s hand, he looked me in the eye and said that his son was to be his football player, but not now. He went on to tell me of his son’s future plans now so horribly crushed. My own children were very young at the time, but I couldn’t help but think of them and what I would have said or done in similar circumstances.

Both the mother and father of the 14-year-old boy whose life ended that morning were distraught, as you might imagine. To console them and offer them meaningful words of support was my hope that same morning. But that isn’t what struck me, as I tried my best to offer those consoling words. No, it was the outpouring of support from those with whom this plant foreman worked and led every day who had come so early that morning to share in his and his wife’s grief offering their comfort. It was overwhelming to me to see this workforce coming together in support of a family who so desperately needed it. To me, this support so freely and immediately given was a true expression of a word that, while not mentioned in the little bit of the KJV I have read so far but evident in the teachings and parables it offers, is a profound one—love.

In the cacophony of a smelly, loud, wet and cold meat or poultry processing plant there are still bonds formed that stretch beyond the plant’s borders and into the lives of its employees and the love they share. While seldom if ever evidenced in a plant’s environment, the shared love comes forth during times of personal joy, trouble and sorrow.

It took years for my memory of that early morning visit to fade. Today, I cannot now even remember the foreman’s name, but I do remember the many shadowed faces of the employees there to simply offer their love.

“Oh, Ye of little faith?” – Matthew 6:30

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