Getting Your Hands Dirty

Last week was kind of a long, tough week for me. I was super busy at work and had to start early every day, putting in long hours dealing with a lot of large projects, operational issues and employee reviews. By Thursday evening I was beat, so I told my wife I was only going to work a half day on Friday. She said that sounded great and that she would go in to the office with me that day.

When noon rolled around on Friday I was excited. I had it all worked out in my head. We would drive through a fast food place on the way home to save time. Then I would grab some beach towels, situate the umbrella just right, pour myself a cold ice tea and grab the latest edition of Sports Illustrated. It was going to be such a relaxing afternoon…and I was really looking forward to it.

But as soon as we got into the car and I asked her what she wanted for lunch, I knew I was in trouble. She had a slightly different vision, one that included lunch at her favorite little Italian restaurant, then shopping for plants and trees on the way home and me spending the rest of the day reworking our front planter area! In my head I was momentarily bummed but I didn’t want her to know it or feel bad. I had been telling her I would do that gardening work for a while, so I had to keep my word. We had a nice lunch at La Famiglia and then went to Home Depot and loaded up three full carts with plants, trees, flowers and top soil. It was nearly 3:00pm when we got home, but not too late to start digging. Our two front planter areas are fairly small but since I don’t have a wheelbarrow, I had to remove all the old rocks and top soil by hand with a 5-gallon bucket. It must have taken me about 35-40 trips just to clear the area before I could even start digging holes for the new plants. By the time the sun went down, I was so tired and so dirty I looked and felt just like that character Pig Pen in the Charlie Brown cartoons.

But something changed inside me as I did that gardening work. There’s something about working with the earth, digging down into it, giving new life to plants and trees and really getting your hands dirty that feels good. After I took a long hot shower, I went back out to the front of the house and admired the newly planted area. I realized that I felt a whole lot better having completed the gardening work, then I would have had I just been sitting under an umbrella…and it looked awesome! My wife actually is the one that deserves most of the credit though. She picked out the right plants and laid out the perfect design. All I did was put them in the earth. But then again…maybe we make good teammates that way!

And that got me thinking… I wonder if God felt really good when He was getting His hands dirty creating the earth and designing all of nature so perfectly. And…I wonder if God looks at us as His teammates on earth…because if so, we better not be afraid to get our hands dirty right along with Him!

 

I love to think of nature as an unlimited broadcasting station,

through which God speaks to us every hour, if we will only tune in.

~ George Washington Carver