Saturday, September 15, 2007

Fresh Cut Grass

As you can probably tell from the title, I spent a few hours today doing yard work. My weed-eater had been out of commission, so I hadn't been able to fully finish my typical mowing on the weekends. While I have mowed, not weed-eating is a whole different story. Little by little, grass started to overtake our flower bed and against our fence. Needless to say, I had a lot of work to catch up on and I am pretty tired from it all.

For the most part I really enjoy mowing and weed-eating because I get to see the finished product. In youth ministry that is not always the case. You can spend years pouring into a student and never really know if they got it. Maybe someday they will hunt you down to tell you how you impacted their life for Christ, but this can be few and far between. Many days at work it feels like I just put out little fires to only be faced by a dozen more the next day. Don't get me wrong. Ministry definitely has its rewards, sometimes here on earth and many times in heaven. It is just nice to have a couple of things in my life that I can see the beginning, middle, and end. I love seeing the yard when all of my work is done. For one thing I know when I'm done. There are only so many times you can mow a yard.

I think it also reminds me of how quickly our lives can change. Even though I had mowed and done the weed-eating just a few weeks ago, you probably couldn't tell that this morning. Little by little the weeds and the grass grew until it looked really bad. Sin can be the same way. When it is left alone, it grows and grows until you find yourself in a huge mess that you might not have seen coming. The lesson I learn over and over again is take care of the small stuff. Whether this be mowing the grass, weed-eating, or getting rid of sin, don't put it off.

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