Mowing the Lawn Part 2: When it Grows Back

The trouble with mowing the lawn is that the grass grows back. It's as if you never mowed it in the first place! And so you must get up the courage to do it all over again.

So of course, when I wrote a blog saying how sometimes God asks us to mow the lawn, I shouldn't have expected that to be a one time thing.

But see, I just wasn't expecting to have to mow the church lawn again. I had mowed it once, at the very beginning of the lawn mowing season, and after knocking a piece of completely useless equipment off the side of the mower, I was perfectly willing to let all the men who signed up keep the grass short from then on.

The problem is, last week, one of them didn't show up.

And right after I publish an article about filling in a need you see at church, there it is, staring me right in the face. Long grass, as far as the eye can see. And even farther, around the back of the church and over to the side yard. A huge, expansive yard, covered in ever growing grass.

And somebody needed to mow it.

I didn't have to. Quite frankly, I didn't want to. But what I do want to do is offer something to God and be true to my word, so I volunteered myself.

Now this is the part where it gets amusing. The lawn mower didn't work.

 Well, it did, it just made a horrible sound and the motor died a couple of times. I really was not too keen to restart it (not that I could) due to my belief that if that horrible sounding engine ran any longer, it would blow up.

Thankfully, I was not alone.

We are a church, meaning we are the body of Christ. We work together; we do not work alone.

I am not the best choice to mow the lawn, as other people are more equipped to deal with such equipment. But God has a tendency to call us to do things we are not too fond of, or even not very good at. But he doesn't leave us alone.

One of our church members was in the basement working on something for the remodeling of our children's area, so he could come out and help me with the lawn mower.

And I found out I was the one who broke the lawnmower.

You know that insignificant little piece I broke off the first time I mowed the lawn? Yeah...that was it. It keeps the shoot on the side open to filter out the grass pieces as you mow along. But it was closed now, so all the grass was stuck inside the lawn mower, making it harder for the blades to turn. He very easily snapped it back into place, and I was on my way again.

So what I learned:

One: That I broke the lawnmower.
Two: That when you say sometimes we have to do things for God, God likes to ask you to do those things.
Three: That God calls us to things in which we are not experts, but he also gives us other people to help us.

Be careful what you preach about, and be open to stepping up to do even the simplest tasks for God. Because in doing those little things, we draw ever closer to the heart of our God.