Day 47

Sunny, sunny Sunday! The front yard finally got some attention today. As I dug old, dead plants out of the ground, cut grass, turned compost, laid mulch and made everything pretty, I kept thinking about the service this morning.

Our pastor was talking about sin and how it was never a part of God's plan for there to be death and pain and torment in this life. Sin brought about destruction and decay; things we were never meant to experience. I loved the illustration he did... Through the first 10 minutes or so, while the music was playing, an artist was on stage, painting a brilliant landscape. (Nice work, John Volk!) He finished the painting and exited the stage with the rest of the band as Brian went into his sermon. To illustrate how sin (our sin) does nothing but blacken God's creation, he turned to the painting, grabbed a can of black spray paint, and marked up the painting with wide sprays of aerosol. The audience gasped as he then took a knife and sliced up the canvas. "Does that bother you?" he asked sarcastically. "It only took that guy 10 minutes to paint that! Imagine the pain God feels when he sees his creation destroying itself."
Well done.

Since the focus of today's service was our sin and its affect on the world, the hour ended with an awkward mix of heavy silence and hesitant applauding. Fortunately, I'm certain that as this series progresses, the rest of The Story will unfold. We'll get to the redemption part. The happy ending.

So as I was pulling up dead  plants and sweeping away grass clippings, I thought about how some people like myself are wired to get such deep satisfaction out of making things better and fixing the broken. There's a sort of redemption we get to experience, even if in just the smallest ways. Of course, even though my little ratty yard does look better now than it did yesterday, there's so much more that could be done. The sink-hole in the center of the yard, the dead patches of grass, the constant collection of street garbage at the bottom of the sidewalk steps, the cracks in the concrete... No amount of hours or money could ever make this earth perfect. We are truly powerless to make everything right again.



 As easy as it could be to let that thought depress me (and sure, it sometimes does), I still love to think of the rest of the story; that there will be redemption in the end. (Both in the physical earth and in our spiritual selves.)  Through our powerlessness, God's redemption shines.

But we still get to experience beauty in the midst of imperfection. We get to see growth, light, joy... We get to dig in our little yards, get our hands dirty and feel content and accomplished with sore muscles. We get to end a lovely day of being outside with ice cream and back-to-back episodes of Arrested Development on Netflix.

And Charlie is happy in his bed of grass.