Lessons Learned on the Farm

This past Saturday in the teeth of 105-degree heat and in spite of warnings to stay inside, a group of guys from church did a work-day at a farm owned by one of the men in the church.

Time for true confessions: I generally hate manual labor, particularly outdoor work. I feel that this is speaks to some significant character defect. My parents certainly instilled in me the value and importance of good, sweaty work. I just never really enjoyed it. There's always approximately five hundred thousand other things that I think I'd rather be doing while I'm out there, doing whatever it is that I'm doing.

But this past Saturday, I sucked it up and I went. I was told that we would be chopping down trees. Sounded like splinters waiting to happen to me.

We arrived and got settled with lots of water and some Krispy Kreme donuts--which makes just about anything palatable--and then Keith (who owns the farm) led us out to the area that we were going to work.

Keith led us down a trail and to a place full of trees. Given the extraordinary heat of the day, I was glad for the shade. But these trees were invasive and aggressive trees, Keith said. They were parasites, destroying everything around them. Just about all of them had to be brought down in order for the habitat to be returned to it's normal, healthy, intended state.

Our different ways of seeing these trees struck me as significant. I didn't own the farm and didn't know what was supposed to be growing in this space. To me, all that mattered was a little shade on a hot day.

But to the one who was invested in this plot of land and who knew what was supposed to grow here and who loved this space, the trees, no matter what kind of temporary shade they might provide, were destructive. They had to go, even if there was short-term cost of us sweating a whole lot more that day as a result.

It would seem in my own life that I am glad for a little shade. If things are expedient, comfortable, and pleasant for me now, then I am not going to be terribly inclined to give them up.

But the Lord who owns me twice--both in his creation of me and his redemption of me--knows what's supposed to be in my life and what is not. He loves me. He knows what he created me for. And so sometimes he demands that things in my life that are providing me temporary comfort get chopped down so that other things might grow up instead.

This chopping-down is always painful--Jesus talked about the Father pruning us, which is a nice way for us to go ahead and mix this metaphor. Sacrifice, giving up, repenting, cutting off, clearing out, destroying, up-rooting...these processes are seldom easy.

But the Father, who's creation I am and who knows me and loves me more than I know and love myself, sees and knows. So this morning in my journal, I offered up the plot of land that is my soul. I invited the Father to cut down whatever needed cutting. Today, anyway, I trust that whatever he says needs to go, needs to go. I pray for the faith to continue to trust that, no matter what the cost, no matter what he says needs to go.