“He causeth the grass to grow for the cattle, and herb for the service of man: that he may bring forth food out of the earth;” ~ Psalms 104:14
By Bro. John L. Cash, “Country Preacher Dad”
When my first son, Spencer, was an infant he had a terrible case of colic. When my second son, Seth, was a baby, he didn’t. There’s a simple reason for this. In the interim, my oldest church member, Aunt Annie Myrtle Davis, taught us the recipe for the “Mississippi Colic Cure”:Onion Tea.
I have passed this recipe on to lots of fathers and mothers with fussy babies. One of the babies I cured was Jack Rockwood, whose mama writes “The Rockwood Files” on this website (see below). Jack was a screaming, colicky baby, but after one dose of onion tea he was cured.Now he looks like a linebacker, and, when he eats a meal, he eats with both hands. I’m not kidding.
When I tell people about using onion tea for colic, I invariably get one of two reactions.Some young mothers say, “I would never give my baby that stuff because I love my baby and don’t want to poison him.” Others give me patronizing smiles and nods; something like, “Brother John really is a quaint and likeable fellow, but I question his sanity.”
But very often both of these groups reconsider, usually at about eleven o’clock at night.It’s then that they call me on the phone and ask me, “What’s that recipe again?” The whole thing sounds a lot more plausible at eleven o’clock when the baby has developed a never-ending-scream-all-night-break- wind-to-wake-the-neighbors-upchuck-Similac-down-your-back attack of colic.
Skeptics often ask me, “Does it really work?”Of course it works, at least a lot of the time or I wouldn’t recommend it. I’m a country preacher, not a Nazi war criminal, for Heaven’s sake!
Then they ask the better question, “How does it work?” Ah, for that answer we must go to the Holy Scriptures. Although our world is fallen because of sin, God originally created it in perfection. The creation account in Genesis makes it clear. God was making the earth with the express purpose of preparing a world with everything that mankind would need to live and to be joyful. The old Rabbi, Joshua ben Sirach, wrote that God put medicine in the plants. I believe it because we live in a world that’s full of the purpose of God.
Once you realize that, you’ll never look at your life the same way. Science would tell us that those babies playing at your feet evolved from a puddle of mud, but we know the truth, that the Lord God made them. This week, look around and see. God has put wisdom and purpose in everything that He has made—even the lowly onion.
Dr. John L. Cash is the “Country Preacher Dad”* (*Sing that to the title to the tune of “Secret Agent Man”) He was raised in Stuttgart, Arkansas, and is beginning his third decade of being a country preacher in the piney woods five miles south of the little town of Hickory, Mississippi.He and his lovely wife, Susan, and his sons, Spencer (age 17) and Seth (age 14) live in the parsonage next door to the Antioch Christian Church,a congregation that has Wee Worship for a great number of beautiful babies (none of which has the colic). You can ask him about the onion tea recipe at extramailbox@juno.com.
