A Dirty Day

I am sore.

And because I am sore, I real­ize just how much of a seden­tary lifestyle I lead. Sure, my job requires me to be on my feet for most of the ten hours I’m there, and many nights require a lot of phys­i­cal labor, depend­ing on the work load.

But on “my” time, I don’t do a great deal of what could be called “phys­i­cal” labor.

I say that heav­i­ly to my shame because one of the very first things God does to man is to put him in the gar­den so that he may tend to and keep it.

That pur­pose has nev­er been rescind­ed. Even when man was expelled from the gar­den in Eden (the gar­den was­n’t Eden; the gar­den was in Eden), God makes it clear that man was still to tend to the earth — if not, then the curs­es lev­eled against man would­n’t seem all that bad at all. 

Today, I final­ly start­ed to step into that curse so that I may redeem my por­tion of the garden.

And I’m sore.

Per­haps I could have saved myself a lot of work by using our elec­tric hedge trim­mer, but why both­er with that when a man­u­al trim­mer works just as well? (“Sim­pli­fy, sim­pli­fy.” — Hen­ry David Thoreau)

And per­haps I could have dri­ven to Wal­mart to buy the afore­men­tioned trim­mer, but I instead chose to walk. I don’t think I’ve walked that much all at once in at least a cou­ple of years.

At least, that’s the impres­sion I’m get­ting from my legs’ protests.

But I made quite a bit of progress in our front yard today. I cleaned out one of our flower beds so that I can final­ly do some­thing with it. I trimmed back some vines that were look­ing like they’d take over our porch if left to them­selves, and I man­aged to get rid of one of the rogue rose bushes.

I’m sore, but I feel good.

I feel as though today was a turn­ing point for me, at least inso­far as my respon­si­bil­i­ty to the earth goes. I’ve been talk­ing about want­i­ng to do some­thing with the yard for years; today, that faith has begun to show signs of life!

Ear­li­er, before the yard project got under­way, I ordered a com­post­ing bin. I’m excit­ed to know that I’ll be able to do some­thing pro­duc­tive with our food scraps; although, we do have sev­er­al heaps of yard waste — vines, twigs, weeds, and so forth — that will like­ly be used to get our com­post started.

It’s been fif­teen or more years since I’ve han­dled rich, hot soil from a com­post bin. If you’ve nev­er felt it, then I sim­ply point out that you are miss­ing out on some­thing amaz­ing, not even tak­ing into account the awe­some­ness of get­ting superb soil out of a bin for­mer­ly filled with food and nature’s scraps!

Tend­ing to your part of the gar­den… Just one of the many vir­tu­ous things we Chris­tians should claim, and when we do so, we fol­low the exam­ple of our Father, the pri­mor­dial planter of all that grows.