Sorghum Mill

 

I remember my mother’s uncle on her father’s side.  Uncle Ralph was a hard man who had a hard life in a hard place.  But Uncle Ralph was always kind to me.  As a little boy, I watched him and my Papaw make Sorghum molasses in West Virginia.  Uncle Ralph had a sorghum field that produced sweet sorghum stalks.  His sorghum mill was a huge set of gears that was turned by his mule, Old Jack.  Papaw fed the stalks into the gears and ducked his head when the overhead pole came around pulled by Old Jack.  Old Jack never got in a hurry, but he never stopped either - until he was told to.  He was just a steady mule.  As the stalks were drawn into the gears, clear sweet sap was squeezed out.  The sorghum juice ran down all around the gears and into a metal pan below where the ladies would scoop it out.  They had to watch out for Old Jack and his pole too.  Then over to the side was a huge, shallow cooking pan about four feet across and two inches deep.  A slow fire underneath kept the sorghum sap bubbling and thickening.  Granny would skim off the bubbling foam with a wooden paddle and put it into a cooling pot nearby.  When it was cool, me and my two cousins, would eat some of the sweet candy-like left-overs.  After the sorghum thickened, it was poured into glass canning jars and sealed for the winter.  There’s nothing better on a winter morning than a stack of pancakes with warm sorghum molasses poured all over!  Hey, David said that the words of the good Lord were sweet to him.  David said in Psalm 119:103, “How sweet are thy words unto my taste! yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth!”  Hey, are the words of God sweet to you?  Are they as sweet as sweet sorghum syrup on a stack of pancakes?  I hope so.  God loves you so much and has His sweet words written just for you.  Why not read them this morning?  They’ll do you a lot of good.