From time to time I will republish a post I’ve written in the past. The post was originally written and published in October 2012.
Sometimes you start a simple task or job and it grows into something bigger. I have certainly experienced this at times in my life.
One time we had a water leak in our vacation trailer. I decided to see if I could fix it myself. I checked and found the problem needed to be fixed from the outside, which meant peeling off the metal shell at the front of the trailer.
I started at the bottom and noticed the problem extended a little higher so I took off the next strip, then the next, and the next.
When I had the whole front of the trailer removed, with just the wood frame left in place, I stepped back and thought, “What have I done?!” It was way more work than I had thought.
Another time we had a leak in our basement. I thought I would dig a hole outside and patch the foundation where the leak was. In the end, the hole I dug was over 5 feet deep and about 12 feet long. Again, that job got way bigger than I had first thought!
Reading about those two experiences, you might think they weren’t that bad, and that I must be a handy guy. That’s where you would be VERY wrong! I’m not that handy, and for all the handy work I have done, I don’t really like it.
It takes me too long; I don’t have the right tools; I make mistakes; I get frustrated; I get discouraged; I cut myself (another story).
Recently, we were at our cottage on a rainy weekend, when we happened to get a break from the rain for a few hours. I decided I’d better take the opportunity to cut the grass since we wouldn’t be back for a few weeks.
It’s such a small piece of lawn that the job really doesn’t take much time. But, as I was running the lawnmower over our grass, I thought about my brother’s lawn. He had left his cottage a few hours earlier in the rain and I had noticed that his lawn needed a cut.
Since he’s up at his cottage almost every weekend and often cuts our grass (because we don’t get there all that frequently), I thought it was my chance to return the favour. So, when I finished our lawn, I walked over to his place and started to cut his grass.
As I got close to finishing, I started to think about my brother’s neighbour who’s wife had just had surgery and was in intensive care at the hospital.
I thought, “That guy doesn’t need to be bothered with his lawn”. So, as I finished with my brother’s lawn, I just kept going and worked on his neighbour’s.
As I walked back to my place pushing my lawnmower, I realized this was one of the few times a job that got bigger didn’t become frustrating or discouraging. In fact, I walked with a sense of satisfaction that I had, in some small way, been a help to others.
Here’s the thing: One of the greatest ways we can show the love of God to others is not by telling them but by showing them. The problem is it takes time and, for many of us, time is precious. We don’t have a lot of extra time to allow the task or job we are working on to become any bigger. But sometimes that is exactly how we are to “love one another as I have loved you” John 13:34.
That’s Life!
Paul
Question: What kind of “loving one another” acts have you done recently?
