One of my favorite proverbs
is, “Where no oxen are the stall is clean, but much increase is by the strength
of an ox,” Proverbs 14:4. Some folks are so focused on neatness, on everything
being in its own place, on there not being a speck of dust, on having
absolutely no disorder, on nothing going awry – that there is no room for
growth, no room for failure, no room for learning, no room for
misunderstanding, no room for unpredictability.
It would be nice to have a
stall, a barn, a barnyard, without the mess that oxen produce; but of course
that would mean that there’d be no oxen to produce the mess that must be
shoveled and therefore no oxen to plow the fields; and with no plowed fields
there’d be no sown seed and without sown seed there’d be no harvest and without
a harvest there would be no food and without food there would be no life and
without life it wouldn’t make any difference whether the stall was clean or
not.
Could it be that there are some churches in
which everything is in its place, but in which life is hard to discern? Are there homes in which one is afraid to set foot, lest one inadvertently disturbs the order of the cosmos by introducing a speck of dust or by moving a chair leg
out of its appointed place? This is not an argument for chaos, it’s an argument
for life – life can be messy; life does require shovels.
We love birds, and we
especially love bluebirds. We are blessed to have bluebirds around our home,
when we look out our windows we see bluebirds in our front and side yards.
Bluebirds eat insects, they will eat seeds, but they prefer insects and grubs.
We also love to garden, and we
appreciate a nice-looking lawn, and therein lies the tension of Proverbs 14:4;
bluebirds love grubs; grubs live in the ground; moles love grubs and voles love
plants…voles use the tunnels moles create; if you eliminate grubs you generally
give moles no reason to undermine your lawn, if you don’t have moles then the
voles have no tunnels to use to harm your plants – but to eliminate grubs (at
least quickly) you need to use pesticides and pesticides can harm bluebirds and
we don’t want to harm bluebirds.
What to do? We can have a nice
looking lawn without mole tunnels by using pesticides (which will harm
bluebirds) to kill grubs; or we can have a lawn with annoying tunnels and enjoy
bluebirds. We have chosen the bluebirds.
“Where no grubs are the lawn
is clean; but many bluebirds abound when grubs are found.”
Posts
